On the 23rd of May
of this auspicious year the Bahá’í world will celebrate the
centennial anniversary of the founding of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.
It will commemorate at once the hundreth anniversary of the inception
of the Bábí Dispensation, of the inauguration of the Bahá’í
Era, of the commencement of the Bahá’í Cycle, and of the birth of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The weight of the potentialities with which
this Faith, possessing no peer or equal in the world’s spiritual
history, and marking the culmination of a universal prophetic cycle,
has been endowed, staggers our imagination. The brightness of the
millennial glory which it must shed in the fullness of time dazzles
our eyes. The magnitude of the shadow which its Author will continue
to cast on successive Prophets destined to be raised up after Him
eludes our calculation.
Already in the space of less than a century the operation of the
mysterious processes generated by its creative spirit has provoked a
tumult in human society such as no mind can fathom. Itself undergoing
a period of incubation during its primitive age, it has, through the
emergence of its slowly-crystallizing system, induced a fermentation
in the general life of mankind designed to shake the very foundations
of a disordered society, to purify its life-blood, to reorientate and
reconstruct its institutions, and shape its final destiny.
To what else can the observant eye or the unprejudiced mind,
acquainted with the signs and portents heralding the birth, and
accompanying the rise, of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh ascribe this
dire, this planetary upheaval, with its attendant destruction, misery
and fear, if not to the emergence of His embryonic World Order,
which, as He Himself has unequivocally proclaimed, has “deranged
the equilibrium of the world and revolutionized mankind’s ordered
life”
? To what agency, if not to the irresistible diffusion of
that world-shaking, world-energizing, world-redeeming spirit, which
the Báb has affirmed is “vibrating in the innermost realities
of all created things”
can the origins of this portentous
crisis, incomprehensible to man, and admittedly unprecedented in the
annals of the human race, be attributed? In the convulsions of
contemporary society, in the frenzied, world-wide ebullitions of
men’s thoughts, in the fierce antagonisms inflaming races, creeds
and classes, in the shipwreck of nations, in the downfall of kings,
in the dismemberment of empires, in the extinction of dynasties, in
the collapse of ecclesiastical hierarchies, in the deterioration of
time-honored institutions, in the dissolution of ties, secular as
well as religious, that had for so long held together the members of
the human race — all manifesting themselves with ever-increasing
gravity since the outbreak of the first World War that immediately
preceded the opening years of the Formative Age of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh — in these we can readily recognize the evidences
of the travail of an age that has sustained the impact of His
Revelation, that has ignored His summons, and is now laboring to be
delivered of its burden, as a direct consequence of the impulse
communicated to it by the generative, the purifying, the transmuting
influence of His Spirit.
It is my purpose, on the occasion of an anniversary of such profound
significance, to attempt in the succeeding pages a survey of the
outstanding events of the century that has seen this Spirit burst
forth upon the world, as well as the initial stages of its subsequent
incarnation in a System that must evolve into an Order designed to
embrace the whole of mankind, and capable of fulfilling the high
destiny that awaits man on this planet. I shall endeavor to review,
in their proper perspective and despite the comparatively brief space
of time which separates us from them, the events which the revolution
of a hundred years, unique alike in glory and tribulation, has
unrolled before our eyes. I shall seek to represent and correlate, in
however cursory a manner, those momentous happenings which have
insensibly, relentlessly, and under the very eyes of successive
generations, perverse, indifferent or hostile, transformed a
heterodox and seemingly negligible offshoot of the Shaykhí
school of the Ithná-‘Asharíyyih sect of Shí‘ah
Islám into a world religion whose unnumbered followers are
organically and indissolubly united; whose light has overspread the
earth as far as Iceland in the North and Magellanes in the South;
whose ramifications have spread to no less than sixty countries of
the world; whose literature has been translated and disseminated in
no less than forty languages; whose endowments in the five continents
of the globe, whether local, national or international, already run
into several million dollars; whose incorporated elective bodies have
secured the official recognition of a number of governments in East
and West; whose adherents are recruited from the diversified races
and chief religions of mankind; whose representatives are to be found
in hundreds of cities in both Persia and the United States of
America; to whose verities royalty has publicly and repeatedly
testified; whose independent status its enemies, from the ranks of
its parent religion and in the leading center of both the Arab and
Muslim worlds, have proclaimed and demonstrated; and whose claims
have been virtually recognized, entitling it to rank as the fourth
religion of a Land in which its world spiritual center has been
established, and which is at once the heart of Christendom, the
holiest shrine of the Jewish people, and, save Mecca alone, the most
sacred spot in Islám.
It is not my purpose — nor does the occasion demand it, — to write a
detailed history of the last hundred years of the Bahá’í Faith,
nor do I intend to trace the origins of so tremendous a Movement, or
to portray the conditions under which it was born, or to examine the
character of the religion from which it has sprung, or to arrive at
an estimate of the effects which its impact upon the fortunes of
mankind has produced. I shall rather content myself with a review of
the salient features of its birth and rise, as well as of the initial
stages in the establishment of its administrative
institutions — institutions which must be regarded as the nucleus and
herald of that World Order that must incarnate the soul, execute the
laws, and fulfill the purpose of the Faith of God in this day.
Nor will it be my intention to ignore, whilst surveying the panorama
which the revolution of a hundred years spreads before our gaze, the
swift interweaving of seeming reverses with evident victories, out of
which the hand of an inscrutable Providence has chosen to form the
pattern of the Faith from its earliest days, or to minimize those
disasters that have so often proved themselves to be the prelude to
fresh triumphs which have, in turn, stimulated its growth and
consolidated its past achievements. Indeed, the history of the first
hundred years of its evolution resolves itself into a series of
internal and external crises, of varying severity, devastating in
their immediate effects, but each mysteriously releasing a
corresponding measure of divine power, lending thereby a fresh
impulse to its unfoldment, this further unfoldment engendering in its
turn a still graver calamity, followed by a still more liberal
effusion of celestial grace enabling its upholders to accelerate
still further its march and win in its service still more compelling
victories.
In its broadest outline the first century of the Bahá’í Era may
be said to comprise the Heroic, the Primitive, the Apostolic Age of
the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, and also the initial stages of the
Formative, the Transitional, the Iron Age which is to witness the
crystallization and shaping of the creative energies released by His
Revelation. The first eighty years of this century may roughly be
said to have covered the entire period of the first age, while the
last two decades may be regarded as having witnessed the beginnings
of the second. The former commences with the Declaration of the Báb,
includes the mission of Bahá’u’lláh, and terminates with the
passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The latter is ushered in by His
Will and Testament, which defines its character and establishes its
foundation.
The century under our review may therefore be considered as falling
into four distinct periods, of unequal duration, each of specific
import and of tremendous and indeed unappraisable significance. These
four periods are closely interrelated, and constitute successive acts
of one, indivisible, stupendous and sublime drama, whose mystery no
intellect can fathom, whose climax no eye can even dimly perceive,
whose conclusion no mind can adequately foreshadow. Each of these
acts revolves around its own theme, boasts of its own heroes,
registers its own tragedies, records its own triumphs, and
contributes its own share to the execution of one common, immutable
Purpose. To isolate any one of them from the others, to dissociate
the later manifestations of one universal, all-embracing Revelation
from the pristine purpose that animated it in its earliest days,
would be tantamount to a mutilation of the structure on which it
rests, and to a lamentable perversion of its truth and of its
history.
The first period (1844–1853), centers around the gentle, the
youthful and irresistible person of the Báb, matchless in His
meekness, imperturbable in His serenity, magnetic in His utterance,
unrivaled in the dramatic episodes of His swift and tragic ministry.
It begins with the Declaration of His Mission, culminates in His
martyrdom, and ends in a veritable orgy of religious massacre
revolting in its hideousness. It is characterized by nine years of
fierce and relentless contest, whose theatre was the whole of Persia,
in which above ten thousand heroes laid down their lives, in which
two sovereigns of the Qájár dynasty and their wicked ministers
participated, and which was supported by the entire Shí‘ah
ecclesiastical hierarchy, by the military resources of the state, and
by the implacable hostility of the masses. The second period
(1853–1892) derives its inspiration from the august figure of
Bahá’u’lláh, preeminent in holiness, awesome in the majesty of
His strength and power, unapproachable in the transcendent brightness
of His glory. It opens with the first stirrings, in the soul of
Bahá’u’lláh while in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán, of
the Revelation anticipated by the Báb, attains its plenitude in the
proclamation of that Revelation to the kings and ecclesiastical
leaders of the earth, and terminates in the ascension of its Author
in the vicinity of the prison-town of ‘Akká. It extends over
thirty-nine years of continuous, of unprecedented and overpowering
Revelation, is marked by the propagation of the Faith to the
neighboring territories of Turkey, of Russia, of ‘Iráq, of Syria,
of Egypt and of India, and is distinguished by a corresponding
aggravation of hostility, represented by the united attacks launched
by the Sháh of Persia and the Sulṭán of Turkey, the two
admittedly most powerful potentates of the East, as well as by the
opposition of the twin sacerdotal orders of Shí‘ah and Sunní
Islám. The third period (1892–1921) revolves around the vibrant
personality of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, mysterious in His essence,
unique in His station, astoundingly potent in both the charm and
strength of His character. It commences with the announcement of the
Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh, a document without parallel in the
history of any earlier Dispensation, attains its climax in the
emphatic assertion by the Center of that Covenant, in the City of the
Covenant, of the unique character and far-reaching implications of
that Document, and closes with His passing and the interment of His
remains on Mt. Carmel. It will go down in history as a period of
almost thirty years’ duration, in which tragedies and triumphs have
been so intertwined as to eclipse at one time the Orb of the
Covenant, and at another time to pour forth its light over the
continent of Europe, and as far as Australasia, the Far East and the
North American continent. The fourth period (1921–1944) is
motivated by the forces radiating from the Will and Testament of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, that Charter of Bahá’u’lláh’s New
World Order, the offspring resulting from the mystic intercourse
between Him Who is the Source of the Law of God and the mind of the
One Who is the vehicle and interpreter of that Law. The inception of
this fourth, this last period of the first Bahá’í century
synchronizes with the birth of the Formative Age of the Bahá’í
Era, with the founding of the Administrative Order of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh — a system which is at once the harbinger, the
nucleus and pattern of His World Order. This period, covering the
first twenty-three years of this Formative Age, has already been
distinguished by an outburst of further hostility, of a different
character, accelerating on the one hand the diffusion of the Faith
over a still wider area in each of the five continents of the globe,
and resulting on the other in the emancipation and the recognition of
the independent status of several communities within its pale.
These four periods are to be regarded not only as the component, the
inseparable parts of one stupendous whole, but as progressive stages
in a single evolutionary process, vast, steady and irresistible. For
as we survey the entire range which the operation of a century-old
Faith has unfolded before us, we cannot escape the conclusion that
from whatever angle we view this colossal scene, the events
associated with these periods present to us unmistakable evidences of
a slowly maturing process, of an orderly development, of internal
consolidation, of external expansion, of a gradual emancipation from
the fetters of religious orthodoxy, and of a corresponding diminution
of civil disabilities and restrictions.
Viewing these periods of Bahá’í history as the constituents of a
single entity, we note the chain of events proclaiming successfully
the rise of a Forerunner, the Mission of One Whose advent that
Forerunner had promised, the establishment of a Covenant generated
through the direct authority of the Promised One Himself, and lastly
the birth of a System which is the child sprung from both the Author
of the Covenant and its appointed Center. We observe how the Báb,
the Forerunner, announced the impending inception of a
divinely-conceived Order, how Bahá’u’lláh, the Promised One,
formulated its laws and ordinances, how ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the
appointed Center, delineated its features, and how the present
generation of their followers have commenced to erect the framework
of its institutions. We watch, through these periods, the infant
light of the Faith diffuse itself from its cradle, eastward to India
and the Far East, westward to the neighboring territories of ‘Iráq,
of Turkey, of Russia, and of Egypt, travel as far as the North
American continent, illuminate subsequently the major countries of
Europe, envelop with its radiance, at a later stage, the Antipodes,
brighten the fringes of the Arctic, and finally set aglow the Central
and South American horizons. We witness a corresponding increase in
the diversity of the elements within its fellowship, which from being
confined, in the first period of its history, to an obscure body of
followers chiefly recruited from the ranks of the masses in Shí‘ah
Persia, has expanded into a fraternity representative of the leading
religious systems of the world, of almost every caste and color, from
the humblest worker and peasant to royalty itself. We notice a
similar development in the extent of its literature — a literature
which, restricted at first to the narrow range of hurriedly
transcribed, often corrupted, secretly circulated, manuscripts, so
furtively perused, so frequently effaced, and at times even eaten by
the terrorized members of a proscribed sect, has, within the space of
a century, swelled into innumerable editions, comprising tens of
thousands of printed volumes, in diverse scripts, and in no less than
forty languages, some elaborately reproduced, others profusely
illustrated, all methodically and vigorously disseminated through the
agency of world-wide, properly constituted and specially organized
committees and Assemblies. We perceive a no less apparent evolution
in the scope of its teachings, at first designedly rigid, complex and
severe, subsequently recast, expanded, and liberalized under the
succeeding Dispensation, later expounded, reaffirmed and amplified by
an appointed Interpreter, and lastly systematized and universally
applied to both individuals and institutions. We can discover a no
less distinct gradation in the character of the opposition it has had
to encounter — an opposition, at first kindled in the bosom of Shí‘ah
Islám, which, at a later stage, gathered momentum with the
banishment of Bahá’u’lláh to the domains of the Turkish Sulṭán
and the consequent hostility of the more powerful Sunní hierarchy
and its Caliph, the head of the vast majority of the followers of
Muḥammad — an opposition which, now, through the rise of a divinely
appointed Order in the Christian West, and its initial impact on
civil and ecclesiastical institutions, bids fair to include among its
supporters established governments and systems associated with the
most ancient, the most deeply entrenched sacerdotal hierarchies in
Christendom. We can, at the same time, recognize, through the haze of
an ever-widening hostility, the progress, painful yet persistent, of
certain communities within its pale through the stages of obscurity,
of proscription, of emancipation, and of recognition — stages that
must needs culminate in the course of succeeding centuries, in the
establishment of the Faith, and the founding, in the plenitude of its
power and authority, of the world-embracing Bahá’í Commonwealth.
We can likewise discern a no less appreciable advance in the rise of
its institutions, whether as administrative centers or places of
worship — institutions, clandestine and subterrene in their earliest
beginnings, emerging imperceptibly into the broad daylight of public
recognition, legally protected, enriched by pious endowments,
ennobled at first by the erection of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
of ‘Ishqábád, the first Bahá’í House of Worship, and
more recently immortalized, through the rise in the heart of the
North American continent of the Mother Temple of the West, the
forerunner of a divine, a slowly maturing civilization. And finally,
we can even bear witness to the marked improvement in the conditions
surrounding the pilgrimages performed by its devoted adherents to its
consecrated shrines at its world center — pilgrimages originally
arduous, perilous, tediously long, often made on foot, at times
ending in disappointment, and confined to a handful of harassed
Oriental followers, gradually attracting, under steadily improving
circumstances of security and comfort, an ever swelling number of new
converts converging from the four corners of the globe, and
culminating in the widely publicized yet sadly frustrated visit of a
noble Queen, who, at the very threshold of the city of her heart’s
desire, was compelled, according to her own written testimony, to
divert her steps, and forego the privilege of so priceless a benefit.
May 23, 1844, signalizes the commencement of the most turbulent
period of the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Era, an age which marks
the opening of the most glorious epoch in the greatest cycle which
the spiritual history of mankind has yet witnessed. No more than a
span of nine short years marks the duration of this most spectacular,
this most tragic, this most eventful period of the first Bahá’í
century. It was ushered in by the birth of a Revelation whose Bearer
posterity will acclaim as the “Point round Whom the realities of
the Prophets and Messengers revolve,”
and terminated with the
first stirrings of a still more potent Revelation, “whose day,”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself affirms, “every Prophet hath
announced,”
for which “the soul of every Divine Messenger
hath thirsted,”
and through which “God hath proved the
hearts of the entire company of His Messengers and Prophets.”
Little wonder that the immortal chronicler of the events associated
with the birth and rise of the Bahá’í Revelation has seen fit to
devote no less than half of his moving narrative to the description
of those happenings that have during such a brief space of time so
greatly enriched, through their tragedy and heroism, the religious
annals of mankind. In sheer dramatic power, in the rapidity with
which events of momentous importance succeeded each other, in the
holocaust which baptized its birth, in the miraculous circumstances
attending the martyrdom of the One Who had ushered it in, in the
potentialities with which it had been from the outset so thoroughly
impregnated, in the forces to which it eventually gave birth, this
nine-year period may well rank as unique in the whole range of man’s
religious experience. We behold, as we survey the episodes of this
first act of a sublime drama, the figure of its Master Hero, the Báb,
arise meteor-like above the horizon of Shíráz, traverse the
sombre sky of Persia from south to north, decline with tragic
swiftness, and perish in a blaze of glory. We see His satellites, a
galaxy of God-intoxicated heroes, mount above that same horizon,
irradiate that same incandescent light, burn themselves out with that
self-same swiftness, and impart in their turn an added impetus to the
steadily gathering momentum of God’s nascent Faith.
He Who communicated the original impulse to so incalculable a
Movement was none other than the promised Qá’im (He who ariseth),
the Ṣáḥibu’z-Zamán (the Lord of the Age), Who assumed the
exclusive right of annulling the whole Qur’ánic Dispensation, Who
styled Himself “the Primal Point from which have been generated
all created things … the Countenance of God Whose splendor can
never be obscured, the Light of God Whose radiance can never fade.”
The people among whom He appeared were the most decadent race in the
civilized world, grossly ignorant, savage, cruel, steeped in
prejudice, servile in their submission to an almost deified
hierarchy, recalling in their abjectness the Israelites of Egypt in
the days of Moses, in their fanaticism the Jews in the days of Jesus,
and in their perversity the idolators of Arabia in the days of
Muḥammad. The arch-enemy who repudiated His claim, challenged His
authority, persecuted His Cause, succeeded in almost quenching His
light, and who eventually became disintegrated under the impact of
His Revelation was the Shí‘ah priesthood. Fiercely fanatic,
unspeakably corrupt, enjoying unlimited ascendancy over the masses,
jealous of their position, and irreconcilably opposed to all liberal
ideas, the members of this caste had for one thousand years invoked
the name of the Hidden Imám, their breasts had glowed with the
expectation of His advent, their pulpits had rung with the praises of
His world-embracing dominion, their lips were still devoutly and
perpetually murmuring prayers for the hastening of His coming. The
willing tools who prostituted their high office for the
accomplishment of the enemy’s designs were no less than the
sovereigns of the Qájár dynasty, first, the bigoted, the sickly,
the vacillating Muḥammad Sháh, who at the last moment
cancelled the Báb’s imminent visit to the capital, and, second,
the youthful and inexperienced Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, who
gave his ready assent to the sentence of his Captive’s death. The
arch villains who joined hands with the prime movers of so wicked a
conspiracy were the two grand vizirs, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, the
idolized tutor of Muḥammad Sháh, a vulgar, false-hearted
and fickle-minded schemer, and the arbitrary, bloodthirsty, reckless
Amír-Niẓám, Mírzá Taqí Khán, the first of whom exiled
the Báb to the mountain fastnesses of Ádhirbáyján, and the
latter decreed His death in Tabríz. Their accomplice in these and
other heinous crimes was a government bolstered up by a flock of
idle, parasitical princelings and governors, corrupt, incompetent,
tenaciously holding to their ill-gotten privileges, and utterly
subservient to a notoriously degraded clerical order. The heroes
whose deeds shine upon the record of this fierce spiritual contest,
involving at once people, clergy, monarch and government, were the
Báb’s chosen disciples, the Letters of the Living, and their
companions, the trail-breakers of the New Day, who to so much
intrigue, ignorance, depravity, cruelty, superstition and cowardice
opposed a spirit exalted, unquenchable and awe-inspiring, a knowledge
surprisingly profound, an eloquence sweeping in its force, a piety
unexcelled in fervor, a courage leonine in its fierceness, a
self-abnegation saintly in its purity, a resolve granite-like in its
firmness, a vision stupendous in its range, a veneration for the
Prophet and His Imáms disconcerting to their adversaries, a power of
persuasion alarming to their antagonists, a standard of faith and a
code of conduct that challenged and revolutionized the lives of their
countrymen.
Declaration of the Báb’s Mission
The opening scene of the initial act of this great drama was laid in
the upper chamber of the modest residence of the son of a mercer of
Shíráz, in an obscure corner of that city. The time was the
hour before sunset, on the 22nd day of May, 1844. The participants
were the Báb, a twenty-five year old siyyid, of pure and holy
lineage, and the young Mullá Ḥusayn, the first to believe in Him.
Their meeting immediately before that interview seemed to be purely
fortuitous. The interview itself was protracted till the hour of
dawn. The Host remained closeted alone with His guest, nor was the
sleeping city remotely aware of the import of the conversation they
held with each other. No record has passed to posterity of that
unique night save the fragmentary but highly illuminating account
that fell from the lips of Mullá Ḥusayn.
“I sat spellbound by His utterance, oblivious of time and of those
who awaited me,” he himself has testified, after describing the
nature of the questions he had put to his Host and the conclusive
replies he had received from Him, replies which had established
beyond the shadow of a doubt the validity of His claim to be the
promised Qá’im. “Suddenly the call of the Mu’adhdhin,
summoning the faithful to their morning prayer, awakened me from the
state of ecstasy into which I seemed to have fallen. All the
delights, all the ineffable glories, which the Almighty has recounted
in His Book as the priceless possessions of the people of
Paradise — these I seemed to be experiencing that night. Methinks I
was in a place of which it could be truly said: ‘Therein no toil
shall reach us, and therein no weariness shall touch us;’ ‘no
vain discourse shall they hear therein, nor any falsehood, but only
the cry, “Peace! Peace!”’; ‘their cry therein shall
be, “Glory be to Thee, O God!” and their salutation therein,
“Peace!”, and the close of their cry, “Praise be to God, Lord
of all creatures!”’ Sleep had departed from me that night. I
was enthralled by the music of that voice which rose and fell as He
chanted; now swelling forth as He revealed verses of the
Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, again acquiring ethereal, subtle harmonies as
He uttered the prayers He was revealing. At the end of each
invocation, He would repeat this verse: ‘Far from the glory of
thy Lord, the All-Glorious, be that which His creatures affirm of
Him! And peace be upon His Messengers! And praise be to God, the Lord
of all beings!’
”
“This Revelation,” Mullá Ḥusayn has further testified, “so
suddenly and impetuously thrust upon me, came as a thunderbolt which,
for a time, seemed to have benumbed my faculties. I was blinded by
its dazzling splendor and overwhelmed by its crushing force.
Excitement, joy, awe, and wonder stirred the depths of my soul.
Predominant among these emotions was a sense of gladness and strength
which seemed to have transfigured me. How feeble and impotent, how
dejected and timid, I had felt previously! Then I could neither write
nor walk, so tremulous were my hands and feet. Now, however, the
knowledge of His Revelation had galvanized my being. I felt possessed
of such courage and power that were the world, all its peoples and
its potentates, to rise against me, I would, alone and undaunted,
withstand their onslaught. The universe seemed but a handful of dust
in my grasp. I seemed to be the voice of Gabriel personified, calling
unto all mankind: ‘Awake, for, lo! the morning Light has broken.
Arise, for His Cause is made manifest. The portal of His grace is
open wide; enter therein, O peoples of the world! For He Who is your
promised One is come!’”
A more significant light, however, is shed on this episode, marking
the Declaration of the Mission of the Báb, by the perusal of that
“first, greatest and mightiest”
of all books in the Bábí
Dispensation, the celebrated commentary on the Súrih of Joseph, the
first chapter of which, we are assured, proceeded, in its entirety,
in the course of that night of nights from the pen of its divine
Revealer. The description of this episode by Mullá Ḥusayn, as well
as the opening pages of that Book attest the magnitude and force of
that weighty Declaration. A claim to be no less than the mouthpiece
of God Himself, promised by the Prophets of bygone ages; the
assertion that He was, at the same time, the Herald of One
immeasurably greater than Himself; the summons which He trumpeted
forth to the kings and princes of the earth; the dire warnings
directed to the Chief Magistrate of the realm, Muḥammad Sháh;
the counsel imparted to Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí to fear God, and
the peremptory command to abdicate his authority as grand vizir of
the Sháh and submit to the One Who is the “Inheritor of
the earth and all that is therein”
; the challenge issued to the
rulers of the world proclaiming the self-sufficiency of His Cause,
denouncing the vanity of their ephemeral power, and calling upon them
to “lay aside, one and all, their dominion,”
and deliver
His Message to “lands in both the East and the West”
— these
constitute the dominant features of that initial contact that marked
the birth, and fixed the date, of the inception of the most glorious
era in the spiritual life of mankind.
Enrollment of the Letters of the Living
With this historic Declaration the dawn of an Age that signalizes the
consummation of all ages had broken. The first impulse of a momentous
Revelation had been communicated to the one “but for whom,”
according to the testimony of the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “God would
not have been established upon the seat of His mercy, nor ascended
the throne of eternal glory.”
Not until forty days had elapsed,
however, did the enrollment of the seventeen remaining Letters of the
Living commence. Gradually, spontaneously, some in sleep, others
while awake, some through fasting and prayer, others through dreams
and visions, they discovered the Object of their quest, and were
enlisted under the banner of the new-born Faith. The last, but in
rank the first, of these Letters to be inscribed on the Preserved
Tablet was the erudite, the twenty-two year old Quddús, a direct
descendant of the Imám Ḥasan and the most esteemed disciple of
Siyyid Káẓim. Immediately preceding him, a woman, the only one of
her sex, who, unlike her fellow-disciples, never attained the
presence of the Báb, was invested with the rank of apostleship in
the new Dispensation. A poetess, less than thirty years of age, of
distinguished birth, of bewitching charm, of captivating eloquence,
indomitable in spirit, unorthodox in her views, audacious in her
acts, immortalized as Ṭáhirih (the Pure One) by the “Tongue of
Glory,” and surnamed Qurratu’l-‘Ayn (Solace of the Eyes) by
Siyyid Káẓim, her teacher, she had, in consequence of the
appearance of the Báb to her in a dream, received the first
intimation of a Cause which was destined to exalt her to the fairest
heights of fame, and on which she, through her bold heroism, was to
shed such imperishable luster.
These “first Letters generated from the Primal Point,”
this “company of angels arrayed before God on the Day of His
coming,”
these “Repositories of His Mystery,”
these
“Springs that have welled out from the Source of His
Revelation,”
these first companions who, in the words of the
Persian Bayán, “enjoy nearest access to God,”
these
“Luminaries that have, from everlasting, bowed down, and will
everlastingly continue to bow down, before the Celestial Throne,”
and lastly these “elders”
mentioned in the Book of
Revelation as “sitting before God on their seats,”
“clothed in white raiment”
and wearing on their heads
“crowns of gold”
— these were, ere their dispersal,
summoned to the Báb’s presence, Who addressed to them His parting
words, entrusted to each a specific task, and assigned to some of
them as the proper field of their activities their native provinces.
He enjoined them to observe the utmost caution and moderation in
their behavior, unveiled the loftiness of their rank, and stressed
the magnitude of their responsibilities. He recalled the words
addressed by Jesus to His disciples, and emphasized the superlative
greatness of the New Day. He warned them lest by turning back they
forfeit the Kingdom of God, and assured them that if they did God’s
bidding, God would make them His heirs and spiritual leaders among
men. He hinted at the secret, and announced the approach, of a still
mightier Day, and bade them prepare themselves for its advent. He
called to remembrance the triumph of Abraham over Nimrod, of Moses
over Pharaoh, of Jesus over the Jewish people, and of Muḥammad over
the tribes of Arabia, and asserted the inevitability and ultimate
ascendancy of His own Revelation. To the care of Mullá Ḥusayn He
committed a mission, more specific in character and mightier in
import. He affirmed that His covenant with him had been established,
cautioned him to be forbearing with the divines he would encounter,
directed him to proceed to Ṭihrán, and alluded, in the most
glowing terms, to the as yet unrevealed Mystery enshrined in that
city — a Mystery that would, He affirmed, transcend the light shed by
both Ḥijáz and Shíráz.
Galvanized into action by the mandate conferred upon them, launched
on their perilous and revolutionizing mission, these lesser
luminaries who, together with the Báb, constitute the First Váḥid
(Unity) of the Dispensation of the Bayán, scattered far and wide
through the provinces of their native land, where, with matchless
heroism, they resisted the savage and concerted onslaught of the
forces arrayed against them, and immortalized their Faith by their
own exploits and those of their co-religionists, raising thereby a
tumult that convulsed their country and sent its echoes reverberating
as far as the capitals of Western Europe.
The Báb’s pilgrimage to Mecca
It was not until, however, the Báb had received the eagerly
anticipated letter of Mullá Ḥusayn, His trusted and beloved
lieutenant, communicating the joyful tidings of his interview with
Bahá’u’lláh, that He decided to undertake His long and arduous
pilgrimage to the Tombs of His ancestors. In the month of Sha‘bán,
of the year 1260 A.H. (September, 1844) He Who, both on His father’s
and mother’s side, was of the seed of the illustrious Fáṭimih,
and Who was a descendant of the Imám Ḥusayn, the most eminent
among the lawful successors of the Prophet of Islám, proceeded, in
fulfillment of Islamic traditions, to visit the Kaaba. He embarked
from Búshihr on the 19th of Ramaḍán (October, 1844) on a
sailing vessel, accompanied by Quddús whom He was assiduously
preparing for the assumption of his future office. Landing at Jaddih
after a stormy voyage of over a month’s duration, He donned the
pilgrim’s garb, mounted a camel, and set out for Mecca, arriving on
the first of Dhi’l-Ḥajjih (December 12). Quddús, holding
the bridle in his hands, accompanied his Master on foot to that holy
Shrine. On the day of ‘Arafih, the Prophet-pilgrim of Shíráz,
His chronicler relates, devoted His whole time to prayer. On the day
of Nahr He proceeded to Muná, where He sacrificed according to
custom nineteen lambs, nine in His own name, seven in the name of
Quddús, and three in the name of the Ethiopian servant who attended
Him. He afterwards, in company with the other pilgrims, encompassed
the Kaaba and performed the rites prescribed for the pilgrimage.
His visit to Ḥijáz was marked by two episodes of particular
importance. The first was the declaration of His mission and His open
challenge to the haughty Mírzá Muḥíṭ-i-Kirmání, one of the most
outstanding exponents of the Shaykhí school, who at
times went so far as to assert his independence of the leadership of
that school assumed after the death of Siyyid Káẓim by Ḥájí
Muḥammad Karím Khán, a redoubtable enemy of the Bábí
Faith. The second was the invitation, in the form of an Epistle,
conveyed by Quddús, to the Sherif of Mecca, in which the custodian
of the House of God was called upon to embrace the truth of the new
Revelation. Absorbed in his own pursuits the Sherif however failed to
respond. Seven years later, when in the course of a conversation with
a certain Ḥájí Níyáz-i-Baghdádí, this same Sherif was
informed of the circumstances attending the mission and martyrdom of
the Prophet of Shíráz, he listened attentively to the
description of those events and expressed his indignation at the
tragic fate that had overtaken Him.
The Báb’s visit to Medina marked the conclusion of His pilgrimage.
Regaining Jaddih, He returned to Búshihr, where one of His
first acts was to bid His last farewell to His fellow-traveler and
disciple, and to assure him that he would meet the Beloved of their
hearts. He, moreover, announced to him that he would be crowned with
a martyr’s death, and that He Himself would subsequently suffer a
similar fate at the hands of their common foe.
The Báb’s return to His native land (Ṣafar 1261)
(February–March, 1845) was the signal for a commotion that rocked
the entire country. The fire which the declaration of His mission had
lit was being fanned into flame through the dispersal and activities
of His appointed disciples. Already within the space of less than two
years it had kindled the passions of friend and foe alike. The
outbreak of the conflagration did not even await the return to His
native city of the One Who had generated it. The implications of a
Revelation, thrust so dramatically upon a race so degenerate, so
inflammable in temper, could indeed have had no other consequence
than to excite within men’s bosoms the fiercest passions of fear,
of hate, of rage and envy. A Faith Whose Founder did not content
Himself with the claim to be the Gate of the Hidden Imám, Who
assumed a rank that excelled even that of the Ṣáḥibu’z-Zamán,
Who regarded Himself as the precursor of one incomparably greater
than Himself, Who peremptorily commanded not only the subjects of the
Sháh, but the monarch himself, and even the kings and princes
of the earth, to forsake their all and follow Him, Who claimed to be
the inheritor of the earth and all that is therein — a Faith Whose
religious doctrines, Whose ethical standards, social principles and
religious laws challenged the whole structure of the society in which
it was born, soon ranged, with startling unanimity, the mass of the
people behind their priests, and behind their chief magistrate, with
his ministers and his government, and welded them into an opposition
sworn to destroy, root and branch, the movement initiated by One Whom
they regarded as an impious and presumptuous pretender.
With the Báb’s return to Shíráz the initial collision of
irreconcilable forces may be said to have commenced. Already the
energetic and audacious Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Basṭámí, one of the
Letters of the Living, “the first to leave the House of God
(Shíráz) and the first to suffer for His sake,” who, in
the presence of one of the leading exponents of Shí‘ah
Islám, the far-famed Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥasan, had
audaciously asserted that from the pen of his new-found Master within
the space of forty-eight hours, verses had streamed that equalled in
number those of the Qur’án, which it took its Author twenty-three
years to reveal, had been excommunicated, chained, disgraced,
imprisoned, and, in all probability, done to death. Mullá
Ṣádiq-i-Khurásání, impelled by the injunction of the Báb
in the Khaṣa’il-i-Sab‘ih to alter the sacrosanct formula
of the adhán, sounded it in its amended form before a
scandalized congregation in Shíráz, and was instantly
arrested, reviled, stripped of his garments, and scourged with a
thousand lashes. The villainous Ḥusayn Khán, the
Niẓámu’d-Dawlih, the governor of Fárs, who had read the
challenge thrown out in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, having ordered
that Mullá Ṣádiq together with Quddús and another believer be
summarily and publicly punished, caused their beards to be burned,
their noses pierced, and threaded with halters; then, having been led
through the streets in this disgraceful condition, they were expelled
from the city.
The people of Shíráz were by that time wild with excitement.
A violent controversy was raging in the masjids, the madrisihs, the
bazaars, and other public places. Peace and security were gravely
imperiled. Fearful, envious, thoroughly angered, the mullás were
beginning to perceive the seriousness of their position. The
governor, greatly alarmed, ordered the Báb to be arrested. He was
brought to Shíráz under escort, and, in the presence of
Ḥusayn Khán, was severely rebuked, and so violently struck
in the face that His turban fell to the ground. Upon the intervention
of the Imám-Jum‘ih He was released on parole, and entrusted to the
custody of His maternal uncle Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid ‘Alí. A
brief lull ensued, enabling the captive Youth to celebrate the
Naw-Rúz of that and the succeeding year in an atmosphere of relative
tranquillity in the company of His mother, His wife, and His uncle.
Meanwhile the fever that had seized His followers was communicating
itself to the members of the clergy and to the merchant classes, and
was invading the higher circles of society. Indeed, a wave of
passionate inquiry had swept the whole country, and unnumbered
congregations were listening with wonder to the testimonies
eloquently and fearlessly related by the Báb’s itinerant
messengers.
The commotion had assumed such proportions that the Sháh,
unable any longer to ignore the situation, delegated the trusted
Siyyid Yaḥyáy-i-Dárábí, surnamed Vaḥíd, one of the most
erudite, eloquent and influential of his subjects — a man who had
committed to memory no less than thirty thousand traditions — to
investigate and report to him the true situation. Broad-minded,
highly imaginative, zealous by nature, intimately associated with the
court, he, in the course of three interviews, was completely won over
by the arguments and personality of the Báb. Their first interview
centered around the metaphysical teachings of Islám, the most
obscure passages of the Qur’án, and the traditions and prophecies
of the Imáms. In the course of the second interview Vaḥíd was
astounded to find that the questions which he had intended to submit
for elucidation had been effaced from his retentive memory, and yet,
to his utter amazement, he discovered that the Báb was answering the
very questions he had forgotten. During the third interview the
circumstances attending the revelation of the Báb’s commentary on
the súrih of Kawthar, comprising no less than two thousand
verses, so overpowered the delegate of the Sháh that he,
contenting himself with a mere written report to the Court
Chamberlain, arose forthwith to dedicate his entire life and
resources to the service of a Faith that was to requite him with the
crown of martyrdom during the Nayríz upheaval. He who had firmly
resolved to confute the arguments of an obscure siyyid of Shíráz,
to induce Him to abandon His ideas, and to conduct Him to Ṭihrán
as an evidence of the ascendancy he had achieved over Him, was made
to feel, as he himself later acknowledged, as “lowly as the dust
beneath His feet.” Even Ḥusayn Khán, who had been Vaḥíd’s
host during his stay in Shíráz, was compelled to write to
the Sháh and express the conviction that his Majesty’s
illustrious delegate had become a Bábí.
Another famous advocate of the Cause of the Báb, even fiercer in
zeal than Vaḥíd, and almost as eminent in rank, was Mullá
Muḥammad-‘Alíy-i-Zanjání, surnamed Ḥujjat. An Akhbárí,
a vehement controversialist, of a bold and independent temper of
mind, impatient of restraint, a man who had dared condemn the whole
ecclesiastical hierarchy from the Abváb-i-Arba‘ih down to the
humblest mullá, he had more than once, through his superior talents
and fervid eloquence, publicly confounded his orthodox Shí‘ah
adversaries. Such a person could not remain indifferent to a Cause
that was producing so grave a cleavage among his countrymen. The
disciple he sent to Shíráz to investigate the matter fell
immediately under the spell of the Báb. The perusal of but a page of
the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, brought by that messenger to Ḥujjat,
sufficed to effect such a transformation within him that he declared,
before the assembled ‘ulamás of his native city, that should the
Author of that work pronounce day to be night and the sun to be a
shadow he would unhesitatingly uphold his verdict.
Yet another recruit to the ever-swelling army of the new Faith was
the eminent scholar, Mírzá Aḥmad-i-Azghandí, the most learned,
the wisest and the most outstanding among the ‘ulamás of Khurásán,
who, in anticipation of the advent of the promised Qá’im, had
compiled above twelve thousand traditions and prophecies concerning
the time and character of the expected Revelation, had circulated
them among His fellow-disciples, and had encouraged them to quote
them extensively to all congregations and in all meetings.
The Báb’s arrest and departure for Iṣfahán
While the situation was steadily deteriorating in the provinces, the
bitter hostility of the people of Shíráz was rapidly moving
towards a climax. Ḥusayn Khán, vindictive, relentless,
exasperated by the reports of his sleepless agents that his Captive’s
power and fame were hourly growing, decided to take immediate action.
It is even reported that his accomplice, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí,
had ordered him to kill secretly the would-be disrupter of the state
and the wrecker of its established religion. By order of the governor
the chief constable, ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd Khán, scaled, in
the dead of night, the wall and entered the house of Ḥájí Mírzá
Siyyid ‘Alí, where the Báb was confined, arrested Him, and
confiscated all His books and documents. That very night, however,
took place an event which, in its dramatic suddenness, was no doubt
providentially designed to confound the schemes of the plotters, and
enable the Object of their hatred to prolong His ministry and
consummate His Revelation. An outbreak of cholera, devastating in its
virulence, had, since midnight, already smitten above a hundred
people. The dread of the plague had entered every heart, and the
inhabitants of the stricken city were, amid shrieks of pain and
grief, fleeing in confusion. Three of the governor’s domestics had
already died. Members of his family were lying dangerously ill. In
his despair he, leaving the dead unburied, had fled to a garden in
the outskirts of the city. ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd Khán,
confronted by this unexpected development, decided to conduct the Báb
to His own home. He was appalled, upon his arrival, to learn that his
son lay in the death-throes of the plague. In his despair he threw
himself at the feet of the Báb, begged to be forgiven, adjured Him
not to visit upon the son the sins of the father, and pledged his
word to resign his post, and never again to accept such a position.
Finding that his prayer had been answered, he addressed a plea to the
governor begging him to release his Captive, and thereby deflect the
fatal course of this dire visitation. Ḥusayn Khán acceded
to his request, and released his Prisoner on condition of His
quitting the city.
The Báb’s sojourn in Iṣfahán
Miraculously preserved by an almighty and watchful Providence, the
Báb proceeded to Iṣfahán (September, 1846), accompanied by Siyyid
Káẓim-i-Zanjání. Another lull ensued, a brief period of
comparative tranquillity during which the Divine processes which had
been set in motion gathered further momentum, precipitating a series
of events leading to the imprisonment of the Báb in the fortresses
of Máh-Kú and Chihríq, and culminating in His martyrdom in
the barrack-square of Tabríz. Well aware of the impending trials
that were to afflict Him, the Báb had, ere His final separation from
His family, bequeathed to His mother and His wife all His
possessions, had confided to the latter the secret of what was to
befall Him, and revealed for her a special prayer the reading of
which, He assured her, would resolve her perplexities and allay her
sorrows. The first forty days of His sojourn in Iṣfahán were spent
as the guest of Mírzá Siyyid Muḥammad, the Sulṭánu’l-‘Ulamá,
the Imám-Jum‘ih, one of the principal ecclesiastical dignitaries
of the realm, in accordance with the instructions of the governor of
the city, Manúchihr Khán, the Mu‘tamidu’d-Dawlih,
who had received from the Báb a letter requesting him to appoint the
place where He should dwell. He was ceremoniously received, and such
was the spell He cast over the people of that city that, on one
occasion, after His return from the public bath, an eager multitude
clamored for the water that had been used for His ablutions. So magic
was His charm that His host, forgetful of the dignity of his high
rank, was wont to wait personally upon Him. It was at the request of
this same prelate that the Báb, one night, after supper, revealed
His well-known commentary on the súrih of Va’l-‘Aṣr. Writing
with astonishing rapidity, He, in a few hours, had devoted to the
exposition of the significance of only the first letter of that
súrih — a letter which Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í
had stressed, and which Bahá’u’lláh refers to in the
Kitáb-i-Aqdas — verses that equalled in number a third of the
Qur’án, a feat that called forth such an outburst of reverent
astonishment from those who witnessed it that they arose and kissed
the hem of His robe.
The tumultuous enthusiasm of the people of Iṣfahán was meanwhile
visibly increasing. Crowds of people, some impelled by curiosity,
others eager to discover the truth, still others anxious to be healed
of their infirmities, flocked from every quarter of the city to the
house of the Imám-Jum‘ih. The wise and judicious Manúchihr
Khán could not resist the temptation of visiting so strange,
so intriguing a Personage. Before a brilliant assemblage of the most
accomplished divines he, a Georgian by origin and a Christian by
birth, requested the Báb to expound and demonstrate the truth of
Muḥammad’s specific mission. To this request, which those present
had felt compelled to decline, the Báb readily responded. In less
than two hours, and in the space of fifty pages, He had not only
revealed a minute, a vigorous and original dissertation on this noble
theme, but had also linked it with both the coming of the Qá’im
and the return of the Imám Ḥusayn — an exposition that prompted
Manúchihr Khán to declare before that gathering his
faith in the Prophet of Islám, as well as his recognition of the
supernatural gifts with which the Author of so convincing a treatise
was endowed.
These evidences of the growing ascendancy exercised by an unlearned
Youth on the governor and the people of a city rightly regarded as
one of the strongholds of Shí‘ah Islám, alarmed the
ecclesiastical authorities. Refraining from any act of open hostility
which they knew full well would defeat their purpose, they sought, by
encouraging the circulation of the wildest rumors, to induce the
Grand Vizir of the Sháh to save a situation that was growing
hourly more acute and menacing. The popularity enjoyed by the Báb,
His personal prestige, and the honors accorded Him by His countrymen,
had now reached their high watermark. The shadows of an impending
doom began to fast gather about Him. A series of tragedies from then
on followed in rapid sequence destined to culminate in His own death
and the apparent extinction of the influence of His Faith.
The overbearing and crafty Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, fearful lest
the sway of the Báb encompass his sovereign and thus seal his own
doom, was aroused as never before. Prompted by a suspicion that the
Báb possessed the secret sympathies of the Mu‘tamid, and well
aware of the confidence reposed in him by the Sháh, he
severely upbraided the Imám-Jum‘ih for the neglect of his sacred
duty. He, at the same time, lavished, in several letters, his favors
upon the ‘ulamás of Iṣfahán, whom he had hitherto ignored. From
the pulpits of that city an incited clergy began to hurl vituperation
and calumny upon the Author of what was to them a hateful and much to
be feared heresy. The Sháh himself was induced to summon the
Báb to his capital. Manúchihr Khán, bidden to arrange
for His departure, decided to transfer His residence temporarily to
his own home. Meanwhile the mujtahids and ‘ulamás, dismayed at the
signs of so pervasive an influence, summoned a gathering which issued
an abusive document signed and sealed by the ecclesiastical leaders
of the city, denouncing the Báb as a heretic and condemning Him to
death. Even the Imám-Jum‘ih was constrained to add his written
testimony that the Accused was devoid of reason and judgment. The
Mu‘tamid, in his great embarrassment, and in order to appease the
rising tumult, conceived a plan whereby an increasingly restive
populace were made to believe that the Báb had left for Ṭihrán,
while he succeeded in insuring for Him a brief respite of four months
in the privacy of the ‘Imárat-i-Khurshíd, the
governor’s private residence in Iṣfahán. It was in those days
that the host expressed the desire to consecrate all his possessions,
evaluated by his contemporaries at no less than forty million francs,
to the furtherance of the interests of the new Faith, declared his
intention of converting Muḥammad Sháh, of inducing him to
rid himself of a shameful and profligate minister, and of obtaining
his royal assent to the marriage of one of his sisters with the Báb.
The sudden death of the Mu‘tamid, however, foretold by the Báb
Himself, accelerated the course of the approaching crisis. The
ruthless and rapacious Gurgín Khán, the deputy governor,
induced the Sháh to issue a second summons ordering that the
captive Youth be sent in disguise to Ṭihrán, accompanied by a
mounted escort. To this written mandate of the sovereign the vile
Gurgín Khán, who had previously discovered and destroyed the
will of his uncle, the Mu‘tamid, and seized his property,
unhesitatingly responded. At the distance of less than thirty miles
from the capital, however, in the fortress of Kinár-Gird, a
messenger delivered to Muḥammad Big, who headed the escort, a
written order from Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí instructing him to
proceed to Kulayn, and there await further instructions. This was,
shortly after, followed by a letter which the Sháh had
himself addressed to the Báb, dated Rabí‘u’th-Thání
1263 (March 19–April 17, 1847), and which, though couched in
courteous terms, clearly indicated the extent of the baneful
influence exercised by the Grand Vizir on his sovereign. The plans so
fondly cherished by Manúchihr Khán were now utterly
undone. The fortress of Máh-Kú, not far from the village of that
same name, whose inhabitants had long enjoyed the patronage of the
Grand Vizir, situated in the remotest northwestern corner of
Ádhirbáyján, was the place of incarceration assigned by
Muḥammad Sháh, on the advice of his perfidious minister,
for the Báb. No more than one companion and one attendant from among
His followers were allowed to keep Him company in those bleak and
inhospitable surroundings. All-powerful and crafty, that minister
had, on the pretext of the necessity of his master’s concentrating
his immediate attention on a recent rebellion in Khurásán
and a revolt in Kirmán, succeeded in foiling a plan, which, had it
materialized, would have had the most serious repercussions on his
own fortunes, as well as on the immediate destinies of his
government, its ruler and its people.
Significance of His captivity
The period of the Báb’s banishment to the mountains of
Ádhirbáyján, lasting no less than three years, constitutes
the saddest, the most dramatic, and in a sense the most pregnant
phase of His six year ministry. It comprises His nine months’
unbroken confinement in the fortress of Máh-Kú, and His subsequent
incarceration in the fortress of Chihríq, which was
interrupted only by a brief yet memorable visit to Tabríz. It was
overshadowed throughout by the implacable and mounting hostility of
the two most powerful adversaries of the Faith, the Grand Vizir of
Muḥammad Sháh, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, and the
Amír-Niẓám, the Grand Vizir of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh.
It corresponds to the most critical stage of the mission of
Bahá’u’lláh, during His exile to Adrianople, when confronted
with the despotic Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz and his ministers,
‘Alí Páshá and Fu’ád Páshá, and is
paralleled by the darkest days of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
ministry in the Holy Land, under the oppressive rule of the
tyrannical ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd and the equally tyrannical Jamál
Páshá. Shíráz had been the memorable scene of the
Báb’s historic Declaration; Iṣfahán had provided Him, however
briefly, with a haven of relative peace and security; whilst
Ádhirbáyján was destined to become the theatre of His agony
and martyrdom. These concluding years of His earthly life will go
down in history as the time when the new Dispensation attained its
full stature, when the claim of its Founder was fully and publicly
asserted, when its laws were formulated, when the Covenant of its
Author was firmly established, when its independence was proclaimed,
and when the heroism of its champions blazed forth in immortal glory.
For it was during these intensely dramatic, fate-laden years that the
full implications of the station of the Báb were disclosed to His
disciples, and formally announced by Him in the capital of
Ádhirbáyján, in the presence of the Heir to the Throne;
that the Persian Bayán, the repository of the laws ordained by the
Báb, was revealed; that the time and character of the Dispensation
of “the One Whom God will make manifest”
were unmistakably
determined; that the Conference of Badasht proclaimed the
annulment of the old order; and that the great conflagrations of
Mázindarán, of Nayríz and of Zanján were kindled.
And yet, the foolish and short-sighted Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí
fondly imagined that by confounding the plan of the Báb to meet the
Sháh face to face in the capital, and by relegating Him to
the farthest corner of the realm, he had stifled the Movement at its
birth, and would soon conclusively triumph over its Founder. Little
did he imagine that the very isolation he was forcing upon his
Prisoner would enable Him to evolve the System designed to incarnate
the soul of His Faith, and would afford Him the opportunity of
safeguarding it from disintegration and schism, and of proclaiming
formally and unreservedly His mission. Little did he imagine that
this very confinement would induce that Prisoner’s exasperated
disciples and companions to cast off the shackles of an antiquated
theology, and precipitate happenings that would call forth from them
a prowess, a courage, a self-renunciation unexampled in their
country’s history. Little did he imagine that by this very act he
would be instrumental in fulfilling the authentic tradition ascribed
to the Prophet of Islám regarding the inevitability of that which
should come to pass in Ádhirbáyján. Untaught by the example
of the governor of Shíráz, who, with fear and trembling,
had, at the first taste of God’s avenging wrath, fled ignominiously
and relaxed his hold on his Captive, the Grand Vizir of Muḥammad
Sháh was, in his turn, through the orders he had issued,
storing up for himself severe and inevitable disappointment, and
paving the way for his own ultimate downfall.
His incarceration in Máh-Kú and Chihríq
His orders to ‘Alí Khán, the warden of the fortress of
Máh-Kú, were stringent and explicit. On His way to that fortress
the Báb passed a number of days in Tabríz, days that were marked by
such an intense excitement on the part of the populace that, except
for a few persons, neither the public nor His followers were allowed
to meet Him. As He was escorted through the streets of the city the
shout of “Alláh-u-Akbar” resounded on every side. So great,
indeed, became the clamor that the town crier was ordered to warn the
inhabitants that any one who ventured to seek the Báb’s presence
would forfeit all his possessions and be imprisoned. Upon His arrival
in Máh-Kú, surnamed by Him Jabal-i-Básiṭ (the Open Mountain) no
one was allowed to see Him for the first two weeks except His
amanuensis, Siyyid Ḥusayn, and his brother. So grievous was His
plight while in that fortress that, in the Persian Bayán, He Himself
has stated that at night-time He did not even have a lighted lamp,
and that His solitary chamber, constructed of sun-baked bricks,
lacked even a door, while, in His Tablet to Muḥammad Sháh,
He has complained that the inmates of the fortress were confined to
two guards and four dogs.
Secluded on the heights of a remote and dangerously situated mountain
on the frontiers of the Ottoman and Russian empires; imprisoned
within the solid walls of a four-towered fortress; cut off from His
family, His kindred and His disciples; living in the vicinity of a
bigoted and turbulent community who, by race, tradition, language and
creed, differed from the vast majority of the inhabitants of Persia;
guarded by the people of a district which, as the birthplace of the
Grand Vizir, had been made the recipient of the special favors of his
administration, the Prisoner of Máh-Kú seemed in the eyes of His
adversary to be doomed to languish away the flower of His youth, and
witness, at no distant date, the complete annihilation of His hopes.
That adversary was soon to realize, however, how gravely he had
misjudged both his Prisoner and those on whom he had lavished his
favors. An unruly, a proud and unreasoning people were gradually
subdued by the gentleness of the Báb, were chastened by His modesty,
were edified by His counsels, and instructed by His wisdom. They were
so carried away by their love for Him that their first act every
morning, notwithstanding the remonstrations of the domineering ‘Alí
Khán, and the repeated threats of disciplinary measures
received from Ṭihrán, was to seek a place where they could catch a
glimpse of His face, and beseech from afar His benediction upon their
daily work. In cases of dispute it was their wont to hasten to the
foot of the fortress, and, with their eyes fixed upon His abode,
invoke His name, and adjure one another to speak the truth. ‘Alí
Khán himself, under the influence of a strange vision, felt
such mortification that he was impelled to relax the severity of his
discipline, as an atonement for his past behavior. Such became his
leniency that an increasing stream of eager and devout pilgrims began
to be admitted at the gates of the fortress. Among them was the
dauntless and indefatigable Mullá Ḥusayn, who had walked on foot
the entire way from Mashhad in the east of Persia to Máh-Kú,
the westernmost outpost of the realm, and was able, after so arduous
a journey, to celebrate the festival of Naw-Rúz (1848) in the
company of his Beloved.
Secret agents, however, charged to watch ‘Alí Khán,
informed Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí of the turn events were taking,
whereupon he immediately decided to transfer the Báb to the fortress
of Chihríq (about April 10, 1848), surnamed by Him the
Jabal-i-Shadíd (the Grievous Mountain). There He was
consigned to the keeping of Yaḥyá Khán, a brother-in-law of
Muḥammad Sháh. Though at the outset he acted with the
utmost severity, he was eventually compelled to yield to the
fascination of his Prisoner. Nor were the kurds, who lived in the
village of Chihríq, and whose hatred of the Shí‘ahs
exceeded even that of the inhabitants of Máh-Kú, able to resist the
pervasive power of the Prisoner’s influence. They too were to be
seen every morning, ere they started for their daily work, to
approach the fortress and prostrate themselves in adoration before
its holy Inmate. “So great was the confluence of the people,” is
the testimony of a European eye-witness, writing in his memoirs of
the Báb, “that the courtyard, not being large enough to contain
His hearers, the majority remained in the street and listened with
rapt attention to the verses of the new Qur’án.”
Indeed the turmoil raised in Chihríq eclipsed the scenes
which Máh-Kú had witnessed. Siyyids of distinguished merit, eminent
‘ulamás, and even government officials were boldly and rapidly
espousing the Cause of the Prisoner. The conversion of the zealous,
the famous Mírzá Asadu’lláh, surnamed Dayyán, a prominent
official of high literary repute, who was endowed by the Báb with
the “hidden and preserved knowledge,” and extolled as the
“repository of the trust of the one true God,” and the arrival of
a dervish, a former navváb, from India, whom the Báb in a vision
had bidden renounce wealth and position, and hasten on foot to meet
Him in Ádhirbáyján, brought the situation to a head.
Accounts of these startling events reached Tabríz, were thence
communicated to Ṭihrán, and forced Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí again
to intervene. Dayyán’s father, an intimate friend of that
minister, had already expressed to him his grave apprehension at the
manner in which the able functionaries of the state were being won
over to the new Faith. To allay the rising excitement the Báb was
summoned to Tabríz. Fearful of the enthusiasm of the people of
Ádhirbáyján, those into whose custody He had been delivered
decided to deflect their route, and avoid the town of Khuy,
passing instead through Urúmíyyih. On His arrival in that town
Prince Malik Qásim Mírzá ceremoniously received Him, and was even
seen, on a certain Friday, when his Guest was riding on His way to
the public bath, to accompany Him on foot, while the Prince’s
footmen endeavored to restrain the people who, in their overflowing
enthusiasm, were pressing to catch a glimpse of so marvelous a
Prisoner. Tabríz, in its turn in the throes of wild excitement,
joyously hailed His arrival. Such was the fervor of popular feeling
that the Báb was assigned a place outside the gates of the city.
This, however, failed to allay the prevailing emotion. Precautions,
warnings and restrictions served only to aggravate a situation that
had already become critical. It was at this juncture that the Grand
Vizir issued his historic order for the immediate convocation of the
ecclesiastical dignitaries of Tabríz to consider the most effectual
measures which would, once and for all, extinguish the flames of so
devouring a conflagration.
His examination in Tabríz
The circumstances attending the examination of the Báb, as a result
of so precipitate an act, may well rank as one of the chief landmarks
of His dramatic career. The avowed purpose of that convocation was to
arraign the Prisoner, and deliberate on the steps to be taken for the
extirpation of His so-called heresy. It instead afforded Him the
supreme opportunity of His mission to assert in public, formally and
without any reservation, the claims inherent in His Revelation. In
the official residence, and in the presence, of the governor of
Ádhirbáyján, Náṣiri’d-Dín Mírzá, the heir to the
throne; under the presidency of Ḥájí Mullá Maḥmúd, the
Niẓámu’l-‘Ulamá, the Prince’s tutor; before the assembled
ecclesiastical dignitaries of Tabríz, the leaders of the Shaykhí
community, the Shaykhu’l-Islám, and the Imám-Jum‘ih,
the Báb, having seated Himself in the chief place which had been
reserved for the Valí-‘Ahd (the heir to the throne), gave, in
ringing tones, His celebrated answer to the question put to Him by
the President of that assembly. “I am,”
He exclaimed, “I
am, I am the Promised One! I am the One Whose name you have for a
thousand years invoked, at Whose mention you have risen, Whose advent
you have longed to witness, and the hour of Whose Revelation you have
prayed God to hasten. Verily, I say, it is incumbent upon the peoples
of both the East and the West to obey My word, and to pledge
allegiance to My person.”
Awe-struck, those present momentarily dropped their heads in silent
confusion. Then Mullá Muḥammad-i-Mámáqání, that one-eyed
white-bearded renegade, summoning sufficient courage, with
characteristic insolence, reprimanded Him as a perverse and
contemptible follower of Satan; to which the undaunted Youth retorted
that He maintained what He had already asserted. To the query
subsequently addressed to Him by the Niẓámu’l-‘Ulamá the Báb
affirmed that His words constituted the most incontrovertible
evidence of His mission, adduced verses from the Qur’án to
establish the truth of His assertion, and claimed to be able to
reveal, within the space of two days and two nights, verses equal to
the whole of that Book. In answer to a criticism calling His
attention to an infraction by Him of the rules of grammar, He cited
certain passages from the Qur’án as corroborative evidence, and,
turning aside, with firmness and dignity, a frivolous and irrelevant
remark thrown at Him by one of those who were present, summarily
disbanded that gathering by Himself rising and quitting the room. The
convocation thereupon dispersed, its members confused, divided among
themselves, bitterly resentful and humiliated through their failure
to achieve their purpose. Far from daunting the spirit of their
Captive, far from inducing Him to recant or abandon His mission, that
gathering was productive of no other result than the decision,
arrived at after considerable argument and discussion, to inflict the
bastinado on Him, at the hands, and in the prayer-house of the
heartless and avaricious Mírzá ‘Alí-Aṣghar, the
Shaykhu’l-Islám of that city. Confounded in his
schemes Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí was forced to order the Báb to be
taken back to Chihríq.
His Writings
This dramatic, this unqualified and formal declaration of the Báb’s
prophetic mission was not the sole consequence of the foolish act
which condemned the Author of so weighty a Revelation to a three
years’ confinement in the mountains of Ádhirbáyján. This
period of captivity, in a remote corner of the realm, far removed
from the storm centers of Shíráz, Iṣfahán, and Ṭihrán,
afforded Him the necessary leisure to launch upon His most monumental
work, as well as to engage on other subsidiary compositions designed
to unfold the whole range, and impart the full force, of His
short-lived yet momentous Dispensation. Alike in the magnitude of the
writings emanating from His pen, and in the diversity of the subjects
treated in those writings, His Revelation stands wholly unparalleled
in the annals of any previous religion. He Himself affirms, while
confined in Máh-Kú, that up to that time His writings, embracing
highly diversified subjects, had amounted to more than five hundred
thousand verses. “The verses which have rained from this Cloud
of Divine mercy,”
is Bahá’u’lláh’s testimony in the
Kitáb-i-Íqán, “have been so abundant that none hath yet been
able to estimate their number. A score of volumes are now available.
How many still remain beyond our reach! How many have been plundered
and have fallen into the hands of the enemy, the fate of which none
knoweth!”
No less arresting is the variety of themes presented
by these voluminous writings, such as prayers, homilies, orations,
Tablets of visitation, scientific treatises, doctrinal dissertations,
exhortations, commentaries on the Qur’án and on various
traditions, epistles to the highest religious and ecclesiastical
dignitaries of the realm, and laws and ordinances for the
consolidation of His Faith and the direction of its activities.
Already in Shíráz, at the earliest stage of His ministry, He
had revealed what Bahá’u’lláh has characterized as “the
first, the greatest, and mightiest of all books”
in the Bábí
Dispensation, the celebrated commentary on the súrih of Joseph,
entitled the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, whose fundamental purpose was to
forecast what the true Joseph (Bahá’u’lláh) would, in a
succeeding Dispensation, endure at the hands of one who was at once
His arch-enemy and blood brother. This work, comprising above nine
thousand three hundred verses, and divided into one hundred and
eleven chapters, each chapter a commentary on one verse of the
above-mentioned súrih, opens with the Báb’s clarion-call and dire
warnings addressed to the “concourse of kings and of the sons of
kings;”
forecasts the doom of Muḥammad Sháh; commands
his Grand Vizir, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, to abdicate his
authority; admonishes the entire Muslim ecclesiastical order;
cautions more specifically the members of the Shí‘ah
community; extols the virtues, and anticipates the coming, of
Bahá’u’lláh, the “Remnant of God,” the “Most Great
Master;” and proclaims, in unequivocal language, the independence
and universality of the Bábí Revelation, unveils its import, and
affirms the inevitable triumph of its Author. It, moreover, directs
the “people of the West”
to “issue forth from your
cities and aid the Cause of God;”
warns the peoples of the
earth of the “terrible, the most grievous vengeance of God;”
threatens the whole Islamic world with “the Most Great Fire”
were they to turn aside from the newly-revealed Law; foreshadows the
Author’s martyrdom; eulogizes the high station ordained for the
people of Bahá, the “Companions of the crimson-colored ruby
Ark;”
prophesies the fading out and utter obliteration of some
of the greatest luminaries in the firmament of the Bábí
Dispensation; and even predicts “afflictive torment,”
in
both the “Day of Our Return”
and in “the world which
is to come,”
for the usurpers of the Imamate, who “waged
war against Ḥusayn (Imám Ḥusayn) in the Land of the
Euphrates.”
It was this Book which the Bábís universally regarded, during
almost the entire ministry of the Báb, as the Qur’án of the
people of the Bayán; whose first and most challenging chapter was
revealed in the presence of Mullá Ḥusayn, on the night of its
Author’s Declaration; some of whose pages were borne, by that same
disciple, to Bahá’u’lláh, as the first fruits of a Revelation
which instantly won His enthusiastic allegiance; whose entire text
was translated into Persian by the brilliant and gifted Ṭáhirih;
whose passages inflamed the hostility of Ḥusayn Khán and
precipitated the initial outbreak of persecution in Shíráz;
a single page of which had captured the imagination and entranced the
soul of Ḥujjat; and whose contents had set afire the intrepid
defenders of the Fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí and the
heroes of Nayríz and Zanján.
This work, of such exalted merit, of such far-reaching influence, was
followed by the revelation of the Báb’s first Tablet to Muḥammad
Sháh; of His Tablets to Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Majíd and to
Najíb Páshá, the Válí of Baghdád; of the
Ṣaḥífiy-i-Baynu’l-Ḥaramayn, revealed between Mecca and Medina,
in answer to questions posed by Mírzá Muḥíṭ-i-Kirmání; of the
Epistle to the Sherif of Mecca; of the Kitábu’r-Rúḥ,
comprising seven hundred súrihs; of the Khaṣa’il-i-Sab‘ih,
which enjoined the alteration of the formula of the adhán; of
the Risáliy-i-Furú‘-i-‘Adlíyyih, rendered into Persian by Mullá
Muḥammad-Taqíy-i-Harátí; of the commentary on the súrih of
Kawthar, which effected such a transformation in the soul of
Vaḥíd; of the commentary on the súrih of Va’l-‘Aṣr, in the
house of the Imám-Jum‘ih of Iṣfahán; of the dissertation on the
Specific Mission of Muḥammad, written at the request of Manúchihr
Khán; of the second Tablet to Muḥammad Sháh,
craving an audience in which to set forth the truths of the new
Revelation, and dissipate his doubts; and of the Tablets sent from
the village of Síyáh-Dihán to the ‘ulamás of Qazvín and to Ḥájí
Mírzá Áqásí, inquiring from him as to the cause of the sudden
change in his decision.
The great bulk of the writings emanating from the Báb’s prolific
mind was, however, reserved for the period of His confinement in
Máh-Kú and Chihríq. To this period must probably belong the
unnumbered Epistles which, as attested by no less an authority than
Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb specifically addressed to the divines of
every city in Persia, as well as to those residing in Najaf and
Karbilá, wherein He set forth in detail the errors committed by each
one of them. It was during His incarceration in the fortress of
Máh-Kú that He, according to the testimony of Shaykh
Ḥasan-i-Zunúzí, who transcribed during those nine months the
verses dictated by the Báb to His amanuensis, revealed no less than
nine commentaries on the whole of the Qur’án — commentaries whose
fate, alas, is unknown, and one of which, at least the Author Himself
affirmed, surpassed in some respects a book as deservedly famous as
the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’.
Within the walls of that same fortress the Bayán (Exposition) — that
monumental repository of the laws and precepts of the new
Dispensation and the treasury enshrining most of the Báb’s
references and tributes to, as well as His warning regarding, “Him
Whom God will make manifest”
— was revealed. Peerless among the
doctrinal works of the Founder of the Bábí Dispensation; consisting
of nine Váḥids (Unities) of nineteen chapters each, except the
last Váḥid comprising only ten chapters; not to be confounded with
the smaller and less weighty Arabic Bayán, revealed during the same
period; fulfilling the Muḥammadan prophecy that “a Youth from
Baní-Háshim … will reveal a new Book and promulgate a new
Law;” wholly safeguarded from the interpolation and corruption
which has been the fate of so many of the Báb’s lesser works, this
Book, of about eight thousand verses, occupying a pivotal position in
Bábí literature, should be regarded primarily as a eulogy of the
Promised One rather than a code of laws and ordinances designed to be
a permanent guide to future generations. This Book at once abrogated
the laws and ceremonials enjoined by the Qur’án regarding prayer,
fasting, marriage, divorce and inheritance, and upheld, in its
integrity, the belief in the prophetic mission of Muḥammad, even as
the Prophet of Islám before Him had annulled the ordinances of the
Gospel and yet recognized the Divine origin of the Faith of Jesus
Christ. It moreover interpreted in a masterly fashion the meaning of
certain terms frequently occurring in the sacred Books of previous
Dispensations such as Paradise, Hell, Death, Resurrection, the
Return, the Balance, the Hour, the Last Judgment, and the like.
Designedly severe in the rules and regulations it imposed,
revolutionizing in the principles it instilled, calculated to awaken
from their age-long torpor the clergy and the people, and to
administer a sudden and fatal blow to obsolete and corrupt
institutions, it proclaimed, through its drastic provisions, the
advent of the anticipated Day, the Day when “the Summoner shall
summon to a stern business,” when He will “demolish whatever hath
been before Him, even as the Apostle of God demolished the ways of
those that preceded Him.”
It should be noted, in this connection, that in the third Váḥid of
this Book there occurs a passage which, alike in its explicit
reference to the name of the Promised One, and in its anticipation of
the Order which, in a later age, was to be identified with His
Revelation, deserves to rank as one of the most significant
statements recorded in any of the Báb’s writings. “Well is it
with him,”
is His prophetic announcement, “who fixeth his
gaze upon the Order of Bahá’u’lláh, and rendereth thanks unto
his Lord. For He will assuredly be made manifest. God hath indeed
irrevocably ordained it in the Bayán.”
It is with that
self-same Order that the Founder of the promised Revelation, twenty
years later — incorporating that same term in His
Kitáb-i-Aqdas — identified the System envisaged in that Book,
affirming that “this most great Order”
had deranged the
world’s equilibrium, and revolutionized mankind’s ordered life.
It is the features of that self-same Order which, at a later stage in
the evolution of the Faith, the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Covenant and the appointed Interpreter of His teachings, delineated
through the provisions of His Will and Testament. It is the
structural basis of that self-same Order which, in the Formative Age
of that same Faith, the stewards of that same Covenant, the elected
representatives of the world-wide Bahá’í community, are now
laboriously and unitedly establishing. It is the superstructure of
that self-same Order, attaining its full stature through the
emergence of the Bahá’í World Commonwealth — the Kingdom of God
on earth — which the Golden Age of that same Dispensation must, in
the fullness of time, ultimately witness.
The Báb was still in Máh-Kú when He wrote the most detailed and
illuminating of His Tablets to Muḥammad Sháh. Prefaced by a
laudatory reference to the unity of God, to His Apostles and to the
twelve Imáms; unequivocal in its assertion of the divinity of its
Author and of the supernatural powers with which His Revelation had
been invested; precise in the verses and traditions it cites in
confirmation of so audacious a claim; severe in its condemnation of
some of the officials and representatives of the Sháh’s
administration, particularly of the “wicked and accursed”
Ḥusayn Khán; moving in its description of the humiliation
and hardships to which its writer had been subjected, this historic
document resembles, in many of its features, the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán,
the Tablet addressed, under similar circumstances, from the
prison-fortress of ‘Akká by Bahá’u’lláh to Náṣiri’d-Dín
Sháh, and constituting His lengthiest epistle to any single
sovereign.
The Dalá’il-i-Sab‘ih (Seven Proofs), the most important of the
polemical works of the Báb, was revealed during that same period.
Remarkably lucid, admirable in its precision, original in conception,
unanswerable in its argument, this work, apart from the many and
divers proofs of His mission which it adduces, is noteworthy for the
blame it assigns to the “seven powerful sovereigns ruling the
world”
in His day, as well as for the manner in which it
stresses the responsibilities, and censures the conduct, of the
Christian divines of a former age who, had they recognized the truth
of Muḥammad’s mission, He contends, would have been followed by
the mass of their co-religionists.
During the Báb’s confinement in the fortress of Chihríq,
where He spent almost the whole of the two remaining years of His
life, the Lawḥ-i-Ḥurúfát (Tablet of the Letters) was
revealed, in honor of Dayyán — a Tablet which, however misconstrued
at first as an exposition of the science of divination, was later
recognized to have unravelled, on the one hand, the mystery of the
Mustagháth, and to have abstrusely alluded, on the
other, to the nineteen years which must needs elapse between the
Declaration of the Báb and that of Bahá’u’lláh. It was during
these years — years darkened throughout by the rigors of the Báb’s
captivity, by the severe indignities inflicted upon Him, and by the
news of the disasters that overtook the heroes of Mázindarán and
Nayríz — that He revealed, soon after His return from Tabríz, His
denunciatory Tablet to Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí. Couched in bold and
moving language, unsparing in its condemnation, this epistle was
forwarded to the intrepid Ḥujjat who, as corroborated by
Bahá’u’lláh, delivered it to that wicked minister.
His Covenant
To this period of incarceration in the fortresses of Máh-Kú and
Chihríq — a period of unsurpassed fecundity, yet bitter in
its humiliations and ever-deepening sorrows — belong almost all the
written references, whether in the form of warnings, appeals or
exhortations, which the Báb, in anticipation of the approaching hour
of His supreme affliction, felt it necessary to make to the Author of
a Revelation that was soon to supersede His own. Conscious from the
very beginning of His twofold mission, as the Bearer of a wholly
independent Revelation and the Herald of One still greater than His
own, He could not content Himself with the vast number of
commentaries, of prayers, of laws and ordinances, of dissertations
and epistles, of homilies and orations that had incessantly streamed
from His pen. The Greater Covenant into which, as affirmed in His
writings, God had, from time immemorial, entered, through the
Prophets of all ages, with the whole of mankind, regarding the
newborn Revelation, had already been fulfilled. It had now to be
supplemented by a Lesser Covenant which He felt bound to make with
the entire body of His followers concerning the One Whose advent He
characterized as the fruit and ultimate purpose of His Dispensation.
Such a Covenant had invariably been the feature of every previous
religion. It had existed, under various forms, with varying degrees
of emphasis, had always been couched in veiled language, and had been
alluded to in cryptic prophecies, in abstruse allegories, in
unauthenticated traditions, and in the fragmentary and obscure
passages of the sacred Scriptures. In the Bábí Dispensation,
however, it was destined to be established in clear and unequivocal
language, though not embodied in a separate document. Unlike the
Prophets gone before Him, Whose Covenants were shrouded in mystery,
unlike Bahá’u’lláh, Whose clearly defined Covenant was
incorporated in a specially written Testament, and designated by Him
as “the Book of My Covenant,”
the Báb chose to
intersperse His Book of Laws, the Persian Bayán, with unnumbered
passages, some designedly obscure, mostly indubitably clear and
conclusive, in which He fixes the date of the promised Revelation,
extols its virtues, asserts its pre-eminent character, assigns to it
unlimited powers and prerogatives, and tears down every barrier that
might be an obstacle to its recognition. “He, verily,”
Bahá’u’lláh, referring to the Báb in His Kitáb-i-Badí‘,
has stated, “hath not fallen short of His duty to exhort the
people of the Bayán and to deliver unto them His Message. In no age
or dispensation hath any Manifestation made mention, in such detail
and in such explicit language, of the Manifestation destined to
succeed Him.”
Some of His disciples the Báb assiduously prepared to expect the
imminent Revelation. Others He orally assured would live to see its
day. To Mullá Báqir, one of the Letters of the Living, He actually
prophesied, in a Tablet addressed to him, that he would meet the
Promised One face to face. To Sayyáḥ, another disciple, He gave
verbally a similar assurance. Mullá Ḥusayn He directed to Ṭihrán,
assuring him that in that city was enshrined a Mystery Whose light
neither Ḥijáz nor Shíráz could rival. Quddús, on the eve
of his final separation from Him, was promised that he would attain
the presence of the One Who was the sole Object of their adoration
and love. To Shaykh Ḥasan-i-Zunúzí He declared
while in Máh-Kú that he would behold in Karbilá the countenance of
the promised Ḥusayn. On Dayyán He conferred the title of “the
third Letter to believe in Him Whom God shall make manifest,”
while to ‘Aẓím He divulged, in the Kitáb-i-Panj-Sha’n,
the name, and announced the approaching advent, of Him Who was to
consummate His own Revelation.
A successor or vicegerent the Báb never named, an interpreter of His
teachings He refrained from appointing. So transparently clear were
His references to the Promised One, so brief was to be the duration
of His own Dispensation, that neither the one nor the other was
deemed necessary. All He did was, according to the testimony of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in “A Traveller’s Narrative,” to
nominate, on the advice of Bahá’u’lláh and of another disciple,
Mírzá Yaḥyá, who would act solely as a figurehead pending the
manifestation of the Promised One, thus enabling Bahá’u’lláh to
promote, in relative security, the Cause so dear to His heart.
“The Bayán,”
the Báb in that Book, referring to the
Promised One, affirms, “is, from beginning to end, the
repository of all of His attributes, and the treasury of both His
fire and His light.”
“If thou attainest unto His
Revelation,”
He, in another connection declares, “and
obeyest Him, thou wilt have revealed the fruit of the Bayán; if not,
thou art unworthy of mention before God.”
“O people of the
Bayán!”
He, in that same Book, thus warns the entire company
of His followers, “act not as the people of the Qur’án have
acted, for if ye do so, the fruits of your night will come to
naught.”
“Suffer not the Bayán,”
is His emphatic
injunction, “and all that hath been revealed therein to withhold
you from that Essence of Being and Lord of the visible and
invisible.”
“Beware, beware,”
is His significant
warning addressed to Vaḥíd, “lest in the days of His
Revelation the Váḥid of the Bayán (eighteen Letters of the Living
and the Báb) shut thee out as by a veil from Him, inasmuch as this
Váḥid is but a creature in His sight.”
And again: “O
congregation of the Bayán, and all who are therein! Recognize ye the
limits imposed upon you, for such a One as the Point of the Bayán
Himself hath believed in Him Whom God shall make manifest before all
things were created. Therein, verily, do I glory before all who are
in the kingdom of heaven and earth.”
“In the year nine,”
He, referring to the date of the
advent of the promised Revelation, has explicitly written, “ye
shall attain unto all good.”
“In the year nine, ye will
attain unto the presence of God.”
And again: “After Ḥín
(68) a Cause shall be given unto you which ye shall come to know.”
“Ere nine will have elapsed from the inception of this Cause,”
He more particularly has stated, “the realities of the created
things will not be made manifest. All that thou hast as yet seen is
but the stage from the moist germ until We clothed it with flesh. Be
patient, until thou beholdest a new creation. Say: ‘Blessed,
therefore, be God, the most excellent of Makers!’”
“Wait
thou,”
is His statement to ‘Aẓím, “until nine will have
elapsed from the time of the Bayán. Then exclaim: ‘Blessed,
therefore, be God, the most excellent of Makers!’”
“Be
attentive,”
He, referring in a remarkable passage to the year
nineteen, has admonished, “from the inception of the Revelation
till the number of Váḥid (19).”
“The Lord of the Day of
Reckoning,”
He, even more explicitly, has stated, “will be
manifested at the end of Váḥid (19) and the beginning of eighty
(1280 A.H.).”
“Were He to appear this very moment,”
He, in His eagerness to insure that the proximity of the promised
Revelation should not withhold men from the Promised One, has
revealed, “I would be the first to adore Him, and the first to
bow down before Him.”
“I have written down in My mention of Him,”
He thus extols
the Author of the anticipated Revelation, “these gem-like words:
‘No allusion of Mine can allude unto Him, neither anything
mentioned in the Bayán.’”
“I, Myself, am but the first
servant to believe in Him and in His signs.…”
The year-old
germ,
” He significantly affirms, “that holdeth within
itself the potentialities of the Revelation that is to come is
endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of the whole
of the Bayán.”
And again: “The whole of the Bayán is
only a leaf amongst the leaves of His Paradise.”
“Better
is it for thee,”
He similarly asserts, “to recite but one
of the verses of Him Whom God shall make manifest than to set down
the whole of the Bayán, for on that Day that one verse can save
thee, whereas the entire Bayán cannot save thee.”
“Today
the Bayán is in the stage of seed; at the beginning of the
manifestation of Him Whom God shall make manifest its ultimate
perfection will become apparent.”
“The Bayán deriveth all
its glory from Him Whom God shall make manifest.”
“All
that hath been revealed in the Bayán is but a ring upon My hand, and
I Myself am, verily, but a ring upon the hand of Him Whom God shall
make manifest … He turneth it as He pleaseth, for whatsoever He
pleaseth, and through whatsoever He pleaseth. He, verily, is the Help
in Peril, the Most High.”
“Certitude itself,”
He, in
reply to Vaḥíd and to one of the Letters of the Living who had
inquired regarding the promised One, had declared, “is ashamed
to be called upon to certify His truth … and Testimony itself is
ashamed to testify unto Him.”
Addressing this same Vaḥíd, He
moreover had stated: “Were I to be assured that in the day of
His manifestation thou wilt deny Him, I would unhesitatingly disown
thee … If, on the other hand, I be told that a Christian, who
beareth no allegiance to My Faith, will believe in Him, the same will
I regard as the apple of My eye.”
And finally is this, His moving invocation to God: “Bear Thou
witness that, through this Book, I have covenanted with all created
things concerning the mission of Him Whom Thou shalt make manifest,
ere the covenant concerning My own mission had been established.
Sufficient witness art Thou and they that have believed in Thy
signs.”
“I, verily, have not fallen short of My duty to
admonish that people,”
is yet another testimony from His pen,
“…If on the day of His Revelation all that are on earth bear
Him allegiance, Mine inmost being will rejoice, inasmuch as all will
have attained the summit of their existence.… If not, My soul will
be saddened. I truly have nurtured all things for this purpose. How,
then, can any one be veiled from Him?”
The last three and most eventful years of the Báb’s ministry had,
as we have observed in the preceding pages, witnessed not only the
formal and public declaration of His mission, but also an
unprecedented effusion of His inspired writings, including both the
revelation of the fundamental laws of His Dispensation and also the
establishment of that Lesser Covenant which was to safeguard the
unity of His followers and pave the way for the advent of an
incomparably mightier Revelation. It was during this same period, in
the early days of His incarceration in the fortress of Chihríq,
that the independence of the new-born Faith was openly recognized and
asserted by His disciples. The laws underlying the new Dispensation
had been revealed by its Author in a prison-fortress in the mountains
of Ádhirbáyján, while the Dispensation itself was now to be
inaugurated in a plain on the border of Mázindarán, at a conference
of His assembled followers.
The conference of Badasht
Bahá’u’lláh, maintaining through continual correspondence close
contact with the Báb, and Himself the directing force behind the
manifold activities of His struggling fellow-disciples, unobtrusively
yet effectually presided over that conference, and guided and
controlled its proceedings. Quddús, regarded as the exponent of the
conservative element within it, affected, in pursuance of a
pre-conceived plan designed to mitigate the alarm and consternation
which such a conference was sure to arouse, to oppose the seemingly
extremist views advocated by the impetuous Ṭáhirih. The primary
purpose of that gathering was to implement the revelation of the
Bayán by a sudden, a complete and dramatic break with the past — with
its order, its ecclesiasticism, its traditions, and ceremonials. The
subsidiary purpose of the conference was to consider the means of
emancipating the Báb from His cruel confinement in Chihríq.
The first was eminently successful; the second was destined from the
outset to fail.
The scene of such a challenging and far-reaching proclamation was the
hamlet of Badasht, where Bahá’u’lláh had rented, amidst
pleasant surroundings, three gardens, one of which He assigned to
Quddús, another to Ṭáhirih, whilst the third He reserved for
Himself. The eighty-one disciples who had gathered from various
provinces were His guests from the day of their arrival to the day
they dispersed. On each of the twenty-two days of His sojourn in that
hamlet He revealed a Tablet, which was chanted in the presence of the
assembled believers. On every believer He conferred a new name,
without, however, disclosing the identity of the one who had bestowed
it. He Himself was henceforth designated by the name Bahá. Upon the
Last Letter of the Living was conferred the appellation of Quddús,
while Qurratu’l-‘Ayn was given the title of Ṭáhirih. By these
names they were all subsequently addressed by the Báb in the Tablets
He revealed for each one of them.
It was Bahá’u’lláh Who steadily, unerringly, yet unsuspectedly,
steered the course of that memorable episode, and it was Bahá’u’lláh
Who brought the meeting to its final and dramatic climax. One day in
His presence, when illness had confined Him to bed, Ṭáhirih,
regarded as the fair and spotless emblem of chastity and the
incarnation of the holy Fáṭimih, appeared suddenly, adorned yet
unveiled, before the assembled companions, seated herself on the
right-hand of the affrighted and infuriated Quddús, and, tearing
through her fiery words the veils guarding the sanctity of the
ordinances of Islám, sounded the clarion-call, and proclaimed the
inauguration, of a new Dispensation. The effect was electric and
instantaneous. She, of such stainless purity, so reverenced that even
to gaze at her shadow was deemed an improper act, appeared for a
moment, in the eyes of her scandalized beholders, to have defamed
herself, shamed the Faith she had espoused, and sullied the immortal
Countenance she symbolized. Fear, anger, bewilderment, swept their
inmost souls, and stunned their faculties. ‘Abdu’l-Khaliq-i-Iṣfahání,
aghast and deranged at such a sight, cut his throat with his own
hands. Spattered with blood, and frantic with excitement, he fled
away from her face. A few, abandoning their companions, renounced
their Faith. Others stood mute and transfixed before her. Still
others must have recalled with throbbing hearts the Islamic tradition
foreshadowing the appearance of Fáṭimih herself unveiled while
crossing the Bridge (Ṣiráṭ) on the promised Day of Judgment.
Quddús, mute with rage, seemed to be only waiting for the moment
when he could strike her down with the sword he happened to be then
holding in his hand.
Undeterred, unruffled, exultant with joy, Ṭáhirih arose, and,
without the least premeditation and in a language strikingly
resembling that of the Qur’án, delivered a fervid and eloquent
appeal to the remnant of the assembly, ending it with this bold
assertion: “I am the Word which the Qá’im is to utter, the Word
which shall put to flight the chiefs and nobles of the earth!”
Thereupon, she invited them to embrace each other and celebrate so
great an occasion.
On that memorable day the “Bugle”
mentioned in the Qur’án
was sounded, the “stunning trumpet-blast”
was loudly
raised, and the “Catastrophe”
came to pass. The days
immediately following so startling a departure from the time-honored
traditions of Islám witnessed a veritable revolution in the outlook,
habits, ceremonials and manner of worship of these hitherto zealous
and devout upholders of the Muḥammadan Law. Agitated as had been
the Conference from first to last, deplorable as was the secession of
the few who refused to countenance the annulment of the fundamental
statutes of the Islamic Faith, its purpose had been fully and
gloriously accomplished. Only four years earlier the Author of the
Bábí Revelation had declared His mission to Mullá Ḥusayn in the
privacy of His home in Shíráz. Three years after that
Declaration, within the walls of the prison-fortress of Máh-Kú, He
was dictating to His amanuensis the fundamental and distinguishing
precepts of His Dispensation. A year later, His followers, under the
actual leadership of Bahá’u’lláh, their fellow-disciple, were
themselves, in the hamlet of Badasht, abrogating the Qur’ánic
Law, repudiating both the divinely-ordained and man-made precepts of
the Faith of Muḥammad, and shaking off the shackles of its
antiquated system. Almost immediately after, the Báb Himself, still
a prisoner, was vindicating the acts of His disciples by asserting,
formally and unreservedly, His claim to be the promised Qá’im, in
the presence of the Heir to the Throne, the leading exponents of the
Shaykhí community, and the most illustrious
ecclesiastical dignitaries assembled in the capital of Ádhirbáyján.
A little over four years had elapsed since the birth of the Báb’s
Revelation when the trumpet-blast announcing the formal extinction of
the old, and the inauguration of the new Dispensation was sounded. No
pomp, no pageantry marked so great a turning-point in the world’s
religious history. Nor was its modest setting commensurate with such
a sudden, startling, complete emancipation from the dark and
embattled forces of fanaticism, of priestcraft, of religious
orthodoxy and superstition. The assembled host consisted of no more
than a single woman and a handful of men, mostly recruited from the
very ranks they were attacking, and devoid, with few exceptions, of
wealth, prestige and power. The Captain of the host was Himself an
absentee, a captive in the grip of His foes. The arena was a tiny
hamlet in the plain of Badasht on the border of Mázindarán.
The trumpeter was a lone woman, the noblest of her sex in that
Dispensation, whom even some of her co-religionists pronounced a
heretic. The call she sounded was the death-knell of the twelve
hundred year old law of Islám.
Accelerated, twenty years later, by another trumpet-blast, announcing
the formulation of the laws of yet another Dispensation, this process
of disintegration, associated with the declining fortunes of a
superannuated, though divinely revealed Law, gathered further
momentum, precipitated, in a later age, the annulment of the Sharí‘ah
canonical Law in Turkey, led to the virtual abandonment of that Law
in Shí‘ah Persia, has, more recently, been responsible for
the dissociation of the System envisaged in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas from
the Sunní ecclesiastical Law in Egypt, has paved the way for the
recognition of that System in the Holy Land itself, and is destined
to culminate in the secularization of the Muslim states, and in the
universal recognition of the Law of Bahá’u’lláh by all the
nations, and its enthronement in the hearts of all the peoples, of
the Muslim world.
The Báb’s captivity in a remote corner of Ádhirbáyján,
immortalized by the proceedings of the Conference of Badasht,
and distinguished by such notable developments as the public
declaration of His mission, the formulation of the laws of His
Dispensation and the establishment of His Covenant, was to acquire
added significance through the dire convulsions that sprang from the
acts of both His adversaries and His disciples. The commotions that
ensued, as the years of that captivity drew to a close, and that
culminated in His own martyrdom, called forth a degree of heroism on
the part of His followers and a fierceness of hostility on the part
of His enemies which had never been witnessed during the first three
years of His ministry. Indeed, this brief but most turbulent period
may be rightly regarded as the bloodiest and most dramatic of the
Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Era.
The momentous happenings associated with the Báb’s incarceration
in Máh-Kú and Chihríq, constituting as they did the high
watermark of His Revelation, could have no other consequence than to
fan to fiercer flame both the fervor of His lovers and the fury of
His enemies. A persecution, grimmer, more odious, and more shrewdly
calculated than any which Ḥusayn Khán, or even Ḥájí
Mírzá Áqásí, had kindled was soon to be unchained, to be
accompanied by a corresponding manifestation of heroism unmatched by
any of the earliest outbursts of enthusiasm that had greeted the
birth of the Faith in either Shíráz or Iṣfahán. This
period of ceaseless and unprecedented commotion was to rob that
Faith, in quick succession, of its chief protagonists, was to attain
its climax in the extinction of the life of its Author, and was to be
followed by a further and this time an almost complete elimination of
its eminent supporters, with the sole exception of One Who, at its
darkest hour, was entrusted, through the dispensations of Providence,
with the dual function of saving a sorely-stricken Faith from
annihilation, and of ushering in the Dispensation destined to
supersede it.
The formal assumption by the Báb of the authority of the promised
Qá’im, in such dramatic circumstances and in so challenging a
tone, before a distinguished gathering of eminent Shí‘ah
ecclesiastics, powerful, jealous, alarmed and hostile, was the
explosive force that loosed a veritable avalanche of calamities which
swept down upon the Faith and the people among whom it was born. It
raised to fervid heat the zeal that glowed in the souls of the Báb’s
scattered disciples, who were already incensed by the cruel captivity
of their Leader, and whose ardor was now further inflamed by the
outpourings of His pen which reached them unceasingly from the place
of His confinement. It provoked a heated and prolonged controversy
throughout the length and breadth of the land, in bazaars, masjids,
madrisihs and other public places, deepening thereby the cleavage
that had already sundered its people. Muḥammad Sháh, at so
perilous an hour, was meanwhile rapidly sinking under the weight of
his physical infirmities. The shallow-minded Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí,
now the pivot of state affairs, exhibited a vacillation and
incompetence that seemed to increase with every extension in the
range of his grave responsibilities. At one time he would feel
inclined to support the verdict of the ‘ulamás; at another he
would censure their aggressiveness and distrust their assertions; at
yet another, he would relapse into mysticism, and, wrapt in his
reveries, lose sight of the gravity of the emergency that confronted
him.
So glaring a mismanagement of national affairs emboldened the
clerical order, whose members were now hurling with malignant zeal
anathemas from their pulpits, and were vociferously inciting
superstitious congregations to take up arms against the upholders of
a much hated creed, to insult the honor of their women folk, to
plunder their property and harass and injure their children. “What
of the signs and prodigies,” they thundered before countless
assemblies, “that must needs usher in the advent of the Qá’im?
What of the Major and Minor Occultations? What of the cities of
Jábulqá and Jábulṣá? How are we to explain the sayings of
Ḥusayn-ibn-Rúḥ, and what interpretation should be given to the
authenticated traditions ascribed to Ibn-i-Mihríyár? Where are the
Men of the Unseen, who are to traverse, in a week, the whole surface
of the earth? What of the conquest of the East and West which the
Qá’im is to effect on His appearance? Where is the one-eyed
Anti-Christ and the ass on which he is to mount? What of Sufyán and
his dominion?” “Are we,” they noisily remonstrated, “are we
to account as a dead letter the indubitable, the unnumbered
traditions of our holy Imáms, or are we to extinguish with fire and
sword this brazen heresy that has dared to lift its head in our
land?”
To these defamations, threats and protestations the learned and
resolute champions of a misrepresented Faith, following the example
of their Leader, opposed unhesitatingly treatises, commentaries and
refutations, assiduously written, cogent in their argument, replete
with testimonies, lucid, eloquent and convincing, affirming their
belief in the Prophethood of Muḥammad, in the legitimacy of the
Imáms, in the spiritual sovereignty of the Ṣáḥibu’z-Zamán
(the Lord of the Age), interpreting in a masterly fashion the
obscure, the designedly allegorical and abstruse traditions, verses
and prophecies in the Islamic holy Writ, and adducing, in support of
their contention, the meekness and apparent helplessness of the Imám
Ḥusayn who, despite his defeat, his discomfiture and ignominious
martyrdom, had been hailed by their antagonists as the very
embodiment and the matchless symbol of God’s all-conquering
sovereignty and power.
This fierce, nation-wide controversy had assumed alarming proportions
when Muḥammad Sháh finally succumbed to his illness,
precipitating by his death the downfall of his favorite and
all-powerful minister, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, who, soon stripped
of the treasures he had amassed, fell into disgrace, was expelled
from the capital, and sought refuge in Karbilá. The seventeen year
old Náṣiri’d-Dín Mírzá ascended the throne, leaving the
direction of affairs to the obdurate, the iron-hearted Amír-Niẓám,
Mírzá Taqí Khán, who, without consulting his
fellow-ministers, decreed that immediate and condign punishment be
inflicted on the hapless Bábís. Governors, magistrates and civil
servants, throughout the provinces, instigated by the monstrous
campaign of vilification conducted by the clergy, and prompted by
their lust for pecuniary rewards, vied in their respective spheres
with each other in hounding and heaping indignities on the adherents
of an outlawed Faith. For the first time in the Faith’s history a
systematic campaign in which the civil and ecclesiastical powers were
banded together was being launched against it, a campaign that was to
culminate in the horrors experienced by Bahá’u’lláh in the
Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán and His subsequent banishment to
‘Iráq. Government, clergy and people arose, as one man, to assault
and exterminate their common enemy. In remote and isolated centers
the scattered disciples of a persecuted community were pitilessly
struck down by the sword of their foes, while in centers where large
numbers had congregated measures were taken in self-defense, which,
misconstrued by a cunning and deceitful adversary, served in their
turn to inflame still further the hostility of the authorities, and
multiply the outrages perpetrated by the oppressor. In the East at
Shaykh Ṭabarsí, in the south in Nayríz, in the west
in Zanján, and in the capital itself, massacres, upheavals,
demonstrations, engagements, sieges, acts of treachery proclaimed, in
rapid succession, the violence of the storm which had broken out, and
exposed the bankruptcy, and blackened the annals, of a proud yet
degenerate people.
Highlights of the Mázindarán Upheaval
The audacity of Mullá Ḥusayn who, at the command of the Báb, had
attired his head with the green turban worn and sent to him by his
Master, who had hoisted the Black Standard, the unfurling of which
would, according to the Prophet Muḥammad, herald the advent of the
vicegerent of God on earth, and who, mounted on his steed, was
marching at the head of two hundred and two of his fellow-disciples
to meet and lend his assistance to Quddús in the Jazíriy-i-Khaḍrá
(Verdant Isle) — his audacity was the signal for a clash the
reverberations of which were to resound throughout the entire
country. The contest lasted no less than eleven months. Its theatre
was for the most part the forest of Mázindarán. Its heroes were the
flower of the Báb’s disciples. Its martyrs comprised no less than
half of the Letters of the Living, not excluding Quddús and Mullá
Ḥusayn, respectively the last and the first of these Letters. The
directive force which however unobtrusively sustained it was none
other than that which flowed from the mind of Bahá’u’lláh. It
was caused by the unconcealed determination of the dawn-breakers of a
new Age to proclaim, fearlessly and befittingly, its advent, and by a
no less unyielding resolve, should persuasion prove a failure, to
resist and defend themselves against the onslaughts of malicious and
unreasoning assailants. It demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt
what the indomitable spirit of a band of three hundred and thirteen
untrained, unequipped yet God-intoxicated students, mostly sedentary
recluses of the college and cloister, could achieve when pitted in
self-defense against a trained army, well equipped, supported by the
masses of the people, blessed by the clergy, headed by a prince of
the royal blood, backed by the resources of the state, acting with
the enthusiastic approval of its sovereign, and animated by the
unfailing counsels of a resolute and all-powerful minister. Its
outcome was a heinous betrayal ending in an orgy of slaughter,
staining with everlasting infamy its perpetrators, investing its
victims with a halo of imperishable glory, and generating the very
seeds which, in a later age, were to blossom into world-wide
administrative institutions, and which must, in the fullness of time,
yield their golden fruit in the shape of a world-redeeming,
earth-encircling Order.
It will be unnecessary to attempt even an abbreviated narrative of
this tragic episode, however grave its import, however much
misconstrued by adverse chroniclers and historians. A glance over its
salient features will suffice for the purpose of these pages. We
note, as we conjure up the events of this great tragedy, the
fortitude, the intrepidity, the discipline and the resourcefulness of
its heroes, contrasting sharply with the turpitude, the cowardice,
the disorderliness and the inconstancy of their opponents. We observe
the sublime patience, the noble restraint exercised by one of its
principal actors, the lion-hearted Mullá Ḥusayn, who persistently
refused to unsheathe his sword until an armed and angry multitude,
uttering the foulest invectives, had gathered at a farsang’s
distance from Bárfurúsh to block his way, and had mortally
struck down seven of his innocent and staunch companions. We are
filled with admiration for the tenacity of faith of that same Mullá
Ḥusayn, demonstrated by his resolve to persevere in sounding the
adhán, while besieged in the caravanserai of Sabzih-Maydán,
though three of his companions, who had successively ascended to the
roof of the inn, with the express purpose of performing that sacred
rite, had been instantly killed by the bullets of the enemy. We
marvel at the spirit of renunciation that prompted those sore pressed
sufferers to contemptuously ignore the possessions left behind by
their fleeing enemy; that led them to discard their own belongings,
and content themselves with their steeds and swords; that induced the
father of Badí‘, one of that gallant company, to fling
unhesitatingly by the roadside the satchel, full of turquoises which
he had brought from his father’s mine in Níshápúr; that
led Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqíy-i-Juvayní to cast away a sum
equivalent in value in silver and gold; and impelled those same
companions to disdain, and refuse even to touch, the costly
furnishings and the coffers of gold and silver which the demoralized
and shame-laden Prince Mihdí-Qulí Mírzá, the commander of the
army of Mázindarán and a brother of Muḥammad Sháh, had left
behind in his headlong flight from his camp. We cannot but esteem the
passionate sincerity with which Mullá Ḥusayn pleaded with the
Prince, and the formal assurance he gave him, disclaiming, in no
uncertain terms, any intention on his part or that of his
fellow-disciples of usurping the authority of the Sháh or of
subverting the foundations of his state. We cannot but view with
contempt the conduct of that arch-villain, the hysterical, the cruel
and overbearing Sa‘ídu’l-‘Ulamá, who, alarmed at the approach
of those same companions, flung, in a frenzy of excitement, and
before an immense crowd of men and women, his turban to the ground,
tore open the neck of his shirt, and, bewailing the plight into which
Islám had fallen, implored his congregation to fly to arms and cut
down the approaching band. We are struck with wonder as we
contemplate the super-human prowess of Mullá Ḥusayn which enabled
him, notwithstanding his fragile frame and trembling hand, to slay a
treacherous foe who had taken shelter behind a tree, by cleaving with
a single stroke of his sword the tree, the man and his musket in
twain. We are stirred, moreover, by the scene of the arrival of
Bahá’u’lláh at the Fort, and the indefinable joy it imparted to
Mullá Ḥusayn, the reverent reception accorded Him by His
fellow-disciples, His inspection of the fortifications which they had
hurriedly erected for their protection, and the advice He gave them,
which resulted in the miraculous deliverance of Quddús, in his
subsequent and close association with the defenders of that Fort, and
in his effective participation in the exploits connected with its
siege and eventual destruction. We are amazed at the serenity and
sagacity of that same Quddús, the confidence he instilled on his
arrival, the resourcefulness he displayed, the fervor and gladness
with which the besieged listened, at morn and at even-tide, to the
voice intoning the verses of his celebrated commentary on the Ṣád
of Ṣamad, to which he had already, while in Sárí, devoted a
treatise thrice as voluminous as the Qur’án itself, and which he
was now, despite the tumultuary attacks of the enemy and the
privations he and his companions were enduring, further elucidating
by adding to that interpretation as many verses as he had previously
written. We remember with thrilling hearts that memorable encounter
when, at the cry “Mount your steeds, O heroes of God!” Mullá
Ḥusayn, accompanied by two hundred and two of the beleaguered and
sorely-distressed companions, and preceded by Quddús, emerged before
daybreak from the Fort, and, raising the shout of “Yá
Ṣáḥibu’z-Zamán!”, rushed at full charge towards the
stronghold of the Prince, and penetrated to his private apartments,
only to find that, in his consternation, he had thrown himself from a
back window into the moat, and escaped bare-footed, leaving his host
confounded and routed. We see relived in poignant memory that last
day of Mullá Ḥusayn’s earthly life, when, soon after midnight,
having performed his ablutions, clothed himself in new garments, and
attired his head with the Báb’s turban, he mounted his charger,
ordered the gate of the Fort to be opened, rode out at the head of
three hundred and thirteen of his companions, shouting aloud “Yá
Ṣáḥibu’z-Zamán!”, charged successively the seven barricades
erected by the enemy, captured every one of them, notwithstanding the
bullets that were raining upon him, swiftly dispatched their
defenders, and had scattered their forces when, in the ensuing
tumult, his steed became suddenly entangled in the rope of a tent,
and before he could extricate himself he was struck in the breast by
a bullet which the cowardly ‘Abbás-Qulí Khán-i-Láríjání
had discharged, while lying in ambush in the branches of a
neighboring tree. We acclaim the magnificent courage that, in a
subsequent encounter, inspired nineteen of those stout-hearted
companions to plunge headlong into the camp of an enemy that
consisted of no less than two regiments of infantry and cavalry, and
to cause such consternation that one of their leaders, the same
‘Abbás-Qulí Khán, falling from his horse, and leaving in
his distress one of his boots hanging from the stirrup, ran away,
half-shod and bewildered, to the Prince, and confessed the
ignominious reverse he had suffered. Nor can we fail to note the
superb fortitude with which these heroic souls bore the load of their
severe trials; when their food was at first reduced to the flesh of
horses brought away from the deserted camp of the enemy; when later
they had to content themselves with such grass as they could snatch
from the fields whenever they obtained a respite from their
besiegers; when they were forced, at a later stage, to consume the
bark of the trees and the leather of their saddles, of their belts,
of their scabbards and of their shoes; when during eighteen days they
had nothing but water of which they drank a mouthful every morning;
when the cannon fire of the enemy compelled them to dig subterranean
passages within the Fort, where, dwelling amid mud and water, with
garments rotting away with damp, they had to subsist on ground up
bones; and when, at last, oppressed by gnawing hunger, they, as
attested by a contemporary chronicler, were driven to disinter the
steed of their venerated leader, Mullá Ḥusayn, cut it into pieces,
grind into dust its bones, mix it with the putrified meat, and,
making it into a stew, avidly devour it.
Nor can reference be omitted to the abject treachery to which the
impotent and discredited Prince eventually resorted, and his
violation of his so-called irrevocable oath, inscribed and sealed by
him on the margin of the opening súrih of the Qur’án, whereby he,
swearing by that holy Book, undertook to set free all the defenders
of the Fort, pledged his honor that no man in his army or in the
neighborhood would molest them, and that he would himself, at his own
expense, arrange for their safe departure to their homes. And lastly,
we call to remembrance, the final scene of that sombre tragedy, when,
as a result of the Prince’s violation of his sacred engagement, a
number of the betrayed companions of Quddús were assembled in the
camp of the enemy, were stripped of their possessions, and sold as
slaves, the rest being either killed by the spears and swords of the
officers, or torn asunder, or bound to trees and riddled with
bullets, or blown from the mouths of cannon and consigned to the
flames, or else being disemboweled and having their heads impaled on
spears and lances. Quddús, their beloved leader, was by yet another
shameful act of the intimidated Prince surrendered into the hands of
the diabolical Sa‘ídu’l-‘Ulamá who, in his unquenchable
hostility and aided by the mob whose passions he had sedulously
inflamed, stripped his victim of his garments, loaded him with
chains, paraded him through the streets of Bárfurúsh, and
incited the scum of its female inhabitants to execrate and spit upon
him, assail him with knives and axes, mutilate his body, and throw
the tattered fragments into a fire.
Outstanding features of the Nayríz Upheaval
This stirring episode, so glorious for the Faith, so blackening to
the reputation of its enemies — an episode which must be regarded as
a rare phenomenon in the history of modern times — was soon succeeded
by a parallel upheaval, strikingly similar in its essential features.
The scene of woeful tribulations was now shifted to the south, to the
province of Fárs, not far from the city where the dawning light of
the Faith had broken. Nayríz and its environs were made to sustain
the impact of this fresh ordeal in all its fury. The Fort of Khájih,
in the vicinity of the Chinár-Súkhtih quarter of that
hotly agitated village became the storm-center of the new
conflagration. The hero who towered above his fellows, valiantly
struggled, and fell a victim to its devouring flames was that “unique
and peerless figure of his age,” the far-famed Siyyid
Yaḥyáy-i-Dárábí, better known as Vaḥíd. Foremost among his
perfidious adversaries, who kindled and fed the fire of this
conflagration was the base and fanatical governor of Nayríz,
Zaynu’l-‘Ábidín Khán, seconded by ‘Abdu’lláh Khán,
the Shujá‘u’l-Mulk, and reinforced by Prince Fírúz
Mírzá, the governor of Shíráz. Of a much briefer duration
than the Mázindarán upheaval, which lasted no less than eleven
months, the atrocities that marked its closing stage were no less
devastating in their consequences. Once again a handful of men,
innocent, law-abiding, peace-loving, yet high-spirited and
indomitable, consisting partly, in this case, of untrained lads and
men of advanced age, were surprised, challenged, encompassed and
assaulted by the superior force of a cruel and crafty enemy, an
innumerable host of able-bodied men who, though well-trained,
adequately equipped and continually reinforced, were impotent to
coerce into submission, or subdue, the spirit of their adversaries.
This fresh commotion originated in declarations of faith as fearless
and impassioned, and in demonstrations of religious enthusiasm almost
as vehement and dramatic, as those which had ushered in the
Mázindarán upheaval. It was instigated by a no less sustained and
violent outburst of uncompromising ecclesiastical hostility. It was
accompanied by corresponding manifestations of blind religious
fanaticism. It was provoked by similar acts of naked aggression on
the part of both clergy and people. It demonstrated afresh the same
purpose, was animated throughout by the same spirit, and rose to
almost the same height of superhuman heroism, of fortitude, courage,
and renunciation. It revealed a no less shrewdly calculated
coordination of plans and efforts between the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities designed to challenge and overthrow a
common enemy. It was preceded by a similar categorical repudiation,
on the part of the Bábís, of any intention of interfering with the
civil jurisdiction of the realm, or of undermining the legitimate
authority of its sovereign. It provided a no less convincing
testimony to the restraint and forbearance of the victims, in the
face of the ruthless and unprovoked aggression of the oppressor. It
exposed, as it moved toward its climax, and in hardly less striking a
manner, the cowardice, the want of discipline and the degradation of
a spiritually bankrupt foe. It was marked, as it approached its
conclusion, by a treachery as vile and shameful. It ended in a
massacre even more revolting in the horrors it evoked and the
miseries it engendered. It sealed the fate of Vaḥíd who, by his
green turban, the emblem of his proud lineage, was bound to a horse
and dragged ignominiously through the streets, after which his head
was cut off, was stuffed with straw, and sent as a trophy to the
feasting Prince in Shíráz, while his body was abandoned to
the mercy of the infuriated women of Nayríz, who, intoxicated with
barbarous joy by the shouts of exultation raised by a triumphant
enemy, danced, to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals, around it.
And finally, it brought in its wake, with the aid of no less than
five thousand men, specially commissioned for this purpose, a general
and fierce onslaught on the defenseless Bábís, whose possessions
were confiscated, whose houses were destroyed, whose stronghold was
burned to the ground, whose women and children were captured, and
some of whom, stripped almost naked, were mounted on donkeys, mules
and camels, and led through rows of heads hewn from the lifeless
bodies of their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands, who previously
had been either branded, or had their nails torn out, or had been
lashed to death, or had spikes hammered into their hands and feet, or
had incisions made in their noses through which strings were passed,
and by which they were led through the streets before the gaze of an
irate and derisive multitude.
Episodes associated with the Zanján Upheaval
This turmoil, so ravaging, so distressing, had hardly subsided when
another conflagration, even more devastating than the two previous
upheavals, was kindled in Zanján and its immediate surroundings.
Unprecedented in both its duration and in the number of those who
were swept away by its fury, this violent tempest that broke out in
the west of Persia, and in which Mullá Muḥammad-‘Alíy-i-Zanjání,
surnamed Ḥujjat, one of the ablest and most formidable champions of
the Faith, together with no less than eighteen hundred of his
fellow-disciples, drained the cup of martyrdom, defined more sharply
than ever the unbridgeable gulf that separated the torchbearers of
the newborn Faith from the civil and ecclesiastical exponents of a
gravely shaken Order. The chief figures mainly responsible for, and
immediately concerned with, this ghastly tragedy were the envious and
hypocritical Amír Arslán Khán, the Majdu’d-Dawlih, a
maternal uncle of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, and his
associates, the Ṣadru’d-Dawliy-i-Iṣfahání and Muḥammad
Khán, the Amír-Túmán, who were assisted, on the one hand,
by substantial military reinforcements dispatched by order of the
Amír-Niẓám, and aided, on the other, by the enthusiastic moral
support of the entire ecclesiastical body in Zanján. The spot that
became the theatre of heroic exertions, the scene of intense
sufferings, and the target for furious and repeated assaults, was the
Fort of ‘Alí-Mardán Khán, which at one time sheltered no
less than three thousand Bábís, including men, women and children,
the tale of whose agonies is unsurpassed in the annals of a whole
century.
A brief reference to certain outstanding features of this mournful
episode, endowing the Faith, in its infancy, with measureless
potentialities, will suffice to reveal its distinctive character. The
pathetic scenes following upon the division of the inhabitants of
Zanján into two distinct camps, by the order of its governor — a
decision dramatically proclaimed by a crier, and which dissolved ties
of worldly interest and affection in favor of a mightier loyalty; the
reiterated exhortations addressed by Ḥujjat to the besieged to
refrain from aggression and acts of violence; his affirmation, as he
recalled the tragedy of Mázindarán, that their victory consisted
solely in sacrificing their all on the altar of the Cause of the
Ṣáḥibu’z-Zamán, and his declaration of the unalterable
intention of his companions to serve their sovereign loyally and to
be the well-wishers of his people; the astounding intrepidity with
which these same companions repelled the ferocious onslaught launched
by the Ṣadru’d-Dawlih, who eventually was obliged to confess his
abject failure, was reprimanded by the Sháh and was degraded
from his rank; the contempt with which the occupants of the Fort met
the appeals of the crier seeking on behalf of an exasperated enemy to
inveigle them into renouncing their Cause and to beguile them by the
generous offers and promises of the sovereign; the resourcefulness
and incredible audacity of Zaynab, a village maiden, who, fired with
an irrepressible yearning to throw in her lot with the defenders of
the Fort, disguised herself in male attire, cut off her locks, girt a
sword about her waist, and, raising the cry of Yá Ṣáḥibu’z-Zamán!”
rushed headlong in pursuit of the assailants, and who, disdainful of
food and sleep, continued, during a period of five months, in the
thick of the turmoil, to animate the zeal and to rush to the rescue
of her men companions; the stupendous uproar raised by the guards who
manned the barricades as they shouted the five invocations prescribed
by the Báb, on the very night on which His instructions had been
received — an uproar which precipitated the death of a few persons in
the camp of the enemy, caused the dissolute officers to drop
instantly their wine-glasses to the ground and to overthrow the
gambling-tables, and hurry forth bare-footed, and induced others to
run half-dressed into the wilderness, or flee panic-stricken to the
homes of the ‘ulamás — these stand out as the high lights of this
bloody contest. We recall, likewise, the contrast between the
disorder, the cursing, the ribald laughter, the debauchery and shame
that characterized the camp of the enemy, and the atmosphere of
reverent devotion that filled the Fort, from which anthems of praise
and hymns of joy were continually ascending. Nor can we fail to note
the appeal addressed by Ḥujjat and his chief supporters to the
Sháh, repudiating the malicious assertions of their foes,
assuring him of their loyalty to him and his government, and of their
readiness to establish in his presence the soundness of their Cause;
the interception of these messages by the governor and the
substitution by him of forged letters loaded with abuse which he
dispatched in their stead to Ṭihrán; the enthusiastic support
extended by the female occupants of the Fort, the shouts of
exultation which they raised, the eagerness with which some of them,
disguised in the garb of men, rushed to reinforce its defences and to
supplant their fallen brethren, while others ministered to the sick,
and carried on their shoulders skins of water for the wounded, and
still others, like the Carthaginian women of old, cut off their long
hair and bound the thick coils around the guns to reinforce them; the
foul treachery of the besiegers, who, on the very day they had drawn
up and written out an appeal for peace and, enclosing with it a
sealed copy of the Qur’án as a testimony of their pledge, had sent
it to Ḥujjat, did not shrink from throwing into a dungeon the
members of the delegation, including the children, which had been
sent by him to treat with them, from tearing out the beard of the
venerated leader of that delegation, and from savagely mutilating one
of his fellow-disciples. We call to mind, moreover, the magnanimity
of Ḥujjat who, though afflicted with the sudden loss of both his
wife and child, continued with unruffled calm in exhorting his
companions to exercise forbearance and to resign themselves to the
will of God, until he himself succumbed to a wound he had received
from the enemy; the barbarous revenge which an adversary incomparably
superior in numbers and equipment wreaked upon its victims, giving
them over to a massacre and pillage, unexampled in scope and
ferocity, in which a rapacious army, a greedy populace and an
unappeasable clergy freely indulged; the exposure of the captives, of
either sex, hungry and ill-clad, during no less than fifteen days and
nights, to the biting cold of an exceptionally severe winter, while
crowds of women danced merrily around them, spat in their faces and
insulted them with the foulest invectives; the savage cruelty that
condemned others to be blown from guns, to be plunged into ice-cold
water and lashed severely, to have their skulls soaked in boiling
oil, to be smeared with treacle and left to perish in the snow; and
finally, the insatiable hatred that impelled the crafty governor to
induce through his insinuations the seven year old son of Ḥujjat to
disclose the burial-place of his father, that drove him to violate
the grave, disinter the corpse, order it to be dragged to the sound
of drums and trumpets through the streets of Zanján, and be exposed,
for three days and three nights, to unspeakable injuries. These, and
other similar incidents connected with the epic story of the Zanján
upheaval, characterized by Lord Curzon as a “terrific siege and
slaughter,” combine to invest it with a sombre glory unsurpassed by
any episode of a like nature in the records of the Heroic Age of the
Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.
The Seven Martyrs of Ṭihrán
To the tide of calamity which, during the concluding years of the
Báb’s ministry, was sweeping with such ominous fury the provinces
of Persia, whether in the East, in the South, or in the West, the
heart and center of the realm itself could not remain impervious.
Four months before the Báb’s martyrdom Ṭihrán in its turn was
to participate, to a lesser degree and under less dramatic
circumstances, in the carnage that was besmirching the face of the
country. A tragedy was being enacted in that city which was to prove
but a prelude to the orgy of massacre which, after the Báb’s
execution, convulsed its inhabitants and sowed consternation as far
as the outlying provinces. It originated in the orders and was
perpetrated under the very eyes of the irate and murderous
Amír-Niẓám, supported by Maḥmúd Khán-i-Kalantar, and
aided by a certain Ḥusayn, one of the ‘ulamás of Káshán.
The heroes of that tragedy were the Seven Martyrs of Ṭihrán, who
represented the more important classes among their countrymen, and
who deliberately refused to purchase life by that mere lip-denial
which, under the name of taqíyyih, Shí‘ah Islám had for
centuries recognized as a wholly justifiable and indeed commendable
subterfuge in the hour of peril. Neither the repeated and vigorous
intercessions of highly placed members of the professions to which
these martyrs belonged, nor the considerable sums which, in the case
of one of them — the noble and serene Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid ‘Alí,
the Báb’s maternal uncle — affluent merchants of Shíráz
and Ṭihrán were eager to offer as ransom, nor the impassioned
pleas of state officials on behalf of another — the pious and highly
esteemed dervish, Mírzá Qurbán-‘Alí — nor even the personal
intervention of the Amír-Niẓám, who endeavored to induce both of
these brave men to recant, could succeed in persuading any of the
seven to forego the coveted laurels of martyrdom. The defiant answers
which they flung at their persecutors; the ecstatic joy which seized
them as they drew near the scene of their death; the jubilant shouts
they raised as they faced their executioner; the poignancy of the
verses which, in their last moments, some of them recited; the
appeals and challenges they addressed to the multitude of onlookers
who gazed with stupefaction upon them; the eagerness with which the
last three victims strove to precede one another in sealing their
faith with their blood; and lastly, the atrocities which a
bloodthirsty foe degraded itself by inflicting upon their dead bodies
which lay unburied for three days and three nights in the
Sabzih-Maydán, during which time thousands of so-called devout
Shí‘ahs kicked their corpses, spat upon their faces,
pelted, cursed, derided, and heaped refuse upon them — these were the
chief features of the tragedy of the Seven Martyrs of Ṭihrán, a
tragedy which stands out as one of the grimmest scenes witnessed in
the course of the early unfoldment of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.
Little wonder that the Báb, bowed down by the weight of His
accumulated sorrows in the Fortress of Chihríq, should have
acclaimed and glorified them, in the pages of a lengthy eulogy which
immortalized their fidelity to His Cause, as those same “Seven
Goats” who, according to Islamic tradition, should, on the Day of
Judgment, “walk in front” of the promised Qá’im, and whose
death was to precede the impending martyrdom of their true Shepherd.
Events preceding His death
The waves of dire tribulation that violently battered at the Faith,
and eventually engulfed, in rapid succession, the ablest, the dearest
and most trusted disciples of the Báb, plunged Him, as already
observed, into unutterable sorrow. For no less than six months the
Prisoner of Chihríq, His chronicler has recorded, was unable
to either write or dictate. Crushed with grief by the evil tidings
that came so fast upon Him, of the endless trials that beset His
ablest lieutenants, by the agonies suffered by the besieged and the
shameless betrayal of the survivors, by the woeful afflictions
endured by the captives and the abominable butchery of men, women and
children, as well as the foul indignities heaped on their corpses,
He, for nine days, His amanuensis has affirmed, refused to meet any
of His friends, and was reluctant to touch the meat and drink that
was offered Him. Tears rained continually from His eyes, and profuse
expressions of anguish poured forth from His wounded heart, as He
languished, for no less than five months, solitary and disconsolate,
in His prison.
The pillars of His infant Faith had, for the most part, been hurled
down at the first onset of the hurricane that had been loosed upon
it. Quddús, immortalized by Him as Ismu’lláhi’l-Ákhir
(the Last Name of God); on whom Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet of
Kullu’ṭ-Ṭa‘ám later conferred the sublime appellation of
Nuqṭiy-i-Ukhrá (the Last Point); whom He elevated, in
another Tablet, to a rank second to none except that of the Herald of
His Revelation; whom He identifies, in still another Tablet, with one
of the “Messengers charged with imposture”
mentioned in
the Qur’án; whom the Persian Bayán extolled as that
fellow-pilgrim round whom mirrors to the number of eight Váḥids
revolve; on whose “detachment and the sincerity of whose
devotion to God’s will God prideth Himself amidst the Concourse on
high;”
whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá designated as the “Moon
of Guidance;”
and whose appearance the Revelation of St. John
the Divine anticipated as one of the two “Witnesses” into whom,
ere the “second woe is past,”
the “spirit of life
from God”
must enter — such a man had, in the full bloom of his
youth, suffered, in the Sabzih-Maydán of Bárfurúsh, a death
which even Jesus Christ, as attested by Bahá’u’lláh, had not
faced in the hour of His greatest agony. Mullá Ḥusayn, the first
Letter of the Living, surnamed the Bábu’l-Báb (the Gate of the
Gate); designated as the “Primal Mirror;”
on whom
eulogies, prayers and visiting Tablets of a number equivalent to
thrice the volume of the Qur’án had been lavished by the pen of
the Báb; referred to in these eulogies as “beloved of My
Heart;”
the dust of whose grave, that same Pen had declared,
was so potent as to cheer the sorrowful and heal the sick; whom “the
creatures, raised in the beginning and in the end”
of the Bábí
Dispensation, envy, and will continue to envy till the “Day of
Judgment;”
whom the Kitáb-i-Íqán acclaimed as the one but
for whom “God would not have been established upon the seat of
His mercy, nor ascended the throne of eternal glory;”
to whom
Siyyid Káẓim had paid such tribute that his disciples suspected
that the recipient of such praise might well be the promised One
Himself — such a one had likewise, in the prime of his manhood, died
a martyr’s death at Ṭabarsí. Vaḥíd, pronounced in the
Kitáb-i-Íqán to be the “unique and peerless figure of his
age,”
a man of immense erudition and the most preeminent figure
to enlist under the banner of the new Faith, to whose “talents
and saintliness,”
to whose “high attainments in the realm
of science and philosophy”
the Báb had testified in His
Dalá’il-i-Sab‘ih (Seven Proofs), had already, under similar
circumstances, been swept into the maelstrom of another upheaval, and
was soon to quaff in his turn the cup drained by the heroic martyrs
of Mázindarán. Ḥujjat, another champion of conspicuous audacity,
of unsubduable will, of remarkable originality and vehement zeal, was
being, swiftly and inevitably, drawn into the fiery furnace whose
flames had already enveloped Zanján and its environs. The Báb’s
maternal uncle, the only father He had known since His childhood, His
shield and support and the trusted guardian of both His mother and
His wife, had, moreover, been sundered from Him by the axe of the
executioner in Ṭihrán. No less than half of His chosen disciples,
the Letters of the Living, had already preceded Him in the field of
martyrdom. Ṭáhirih, though still alive, was courageously pursuing
a course that was to lead her inevitably to her doom.
A fast ebbing life, so crowded with the accumulated anxieties,
disappointments, treacheries and sorrows of a tragic ministry, now
moved swiftly towards its climax. The most turbulent period of the
Heroic Age of the new Dispensation was rapidly attaining its
culmination. The cup of bitter woes which the Herald of that
Dispensation had tasted was now full to overflowing. Indeed, He
Himself had already foreshadowed His own approaching death. In the
Kitáb-i-Panj-Sha’n, one of His last works, He had alluded
to the fact that the sixth Naw-Rúz after the declaration of His
mission would be the last He was destined to celebrate on earth. In
His interpretation of the letter Há, He had voiced His craving for
martyrdom, while in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ He had actually
prophesied the inevitability of such a consummation of His glorious
career. Forty days before His final departure from Chihríq He
had even collected all the documents in His possession, and placed
them, together with His pen-case, His seals and His rings, in the
hands of Mullá Báqir, a Letter of the Living, whom He instructed to
entrust them to Mullá ‘Abdu’l-Karím-i-Qazvíní, surnamed Mírzá
Aḥmad, who was to deliver them to Bahá’u’lláh in Ṭihrán.
While the convulsions of Mázindarán and Nayríz were pursuing their
bloody course the Grand Vizir of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh,
anxiously pondering the significance of these dire happenings, and
apprehensive of their repercussions on his countrymen, his government
and his sovereign, was feverishly revolving in his mind that fateful
decision which was not only destined to leave its indelible imprint
on the fortunes of his country, but was to be fraught with such
incalculable consequences for the destinies of the whole of mankind.
The repressive measures taken against the followers of the Báb, he
was by now fully convinced, had but served to inflame their zeal,
steel their resolution and confirm their loyalty to their persecuted
Faith. The Báb’s isolation and captivity had produced the opposite
effect to that which the Amír-Niẓám had confidently anticipated.
Gravely perturbed, he bitterly condemned the disastrous leniency of
his predecessor, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, which had brought matters
to such a pass. A more drastic and still more exemplary punishment,
he felt, must now be administered to what he regarded as an
abomination of heresy which was polluting the civil and
ecclesiastical institutions of the realm. Nothing short, he believed,
of the extinction of the life of Him Who was the fountain-head of so
odious a doctrine and the driving force behind so dynamic a movement
could stem the tide that had wrought such havoc throughout the land.
The siege of Zanján was still in progress when he, dispensing with
an explicit order from his sovereign, and acting independently of his
counsellors and fellow-ministers, dispatched his order to Prince
Ḥamzih Mírzá, the Ḥishmatu’d-Dawlih, the governor of
Ádhirbáyján, instructing him to execute the Báb. Fearing
lest the infliction of such condign punishment in the capital of the
realm would set in motion forces he might be powerless to control, he
ordered that his Captive be taken to Tabríz, and there be done to
death. Confronted with a flat refusal by the indignant Prince to
perform what he regarded as a flagitious crime, the Amír-Niẓám
commissioned his own brother, Mírzá Ḥasan Khán, to
execute his orders. The usual formalities designed to secure the
necessary authorization from the leading mujtahids of Tabríz were
hastily and easily completed. Neither Mullá Muḥammad-i-Mámáqání,
however, who had penned the Báb’s death-warrant on the very day of
His examination in Tabríz, nor Ḥájí Mírzá Báqir, nor Mullá
Murtaḍá-Qulí, to whose houses their Victim was ignominiously led
by the farrásh-báshí, by order of the Grand Vizir,
condescended to meet face to face their dreaded Opponent.
Circumstances attending His martyrdom
Immediately before and soon after this humiliating treatment meted
out to the Báb two highly significant incidents occurred, incidents
that cast an illuminating light on the mysterious circumstances
surrounding the opening phase of His martyrdom. The farrásh-báshí
had abruptly interrupted the last conversation which the Báb was
confidentially having in one of the rooms of the barracks with His
amanuensis Siyyid Ḥusayn, and was drawing the latter aside, and
severely rebuking him, when he was thus addressed by his Prisoner:
“Not until I have said to him all those things that I wish to
say can any earthly power silence Me. Though all the world be armed
against Me, yet shall it be powerless to deter Me from fulfilling, to
the last word, My intention.”
To the Christian Sám Khán — the
colonel of the Armenian regiment ordered to carry out the
execution — who, seized with fear lest his act should provoke the
wrath of God, had begged to be released from the duty imposed upon
him, the Báb gave the following assurance: “Follow your
instructions, and if your intention be sincere, the Almighty is
surely able to relieve you of your perplexity.”
Sám Khán accordingly set out to discharge his duty. A spike
was driven into a pillar which separated two rooms of the barracks
facing the square. Two ropes were fastened to it from which the Báb
and one of his disciples, the youthful and devout Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alíy-i-Zunúzí, surnamed Anís, who had previously
flung himself at the feet of his Master and implored that under no
circumstances he be sent away from Him, were separately suspended.
The firing squad ranged itself in three files, each of two hundred
and fifty men. Each file in turn opened fire until the whole
detachment had discharged its bullets. So dense was the smoke from
the seven hundred and fifty rifles that the sky was darkened. As soon
as the smoke had cleared away the astounded multitude of about ten
thousand souls, who had crowded onto the roof of the barracks, as
well as the tops of the adjoining houses, beheld a scene which their
eyes could scarcely believe.
The Báb had vanished from their sight! Only his companion remained,
alive and unscathed, standing beside the wall on which they had been
suspended. The ropes by which they had been hung alone were severed.
“The Siyyid-i-Báb has gone from our sight!” cried out the
bewildered spectators. A frenzied search immediately ensued. He was
found, unhurt and unruffled, in the very room He had occupied the
night before, engaged in completing His interrupted conversation with
His amanuensis. “I have finished My conversation with Siyyid
Ḥusayn”
were the words with which the Prisoner, so
providentially preserved, greeted the appearance of the
farrásh-báshí, “Now you may proceed to fulfill
your intention.”
Recalling the bold assertion his Prisoner had
previously made, and shaken by so stunning a revelation, the
farrásh-báshí quitted instantly the scene, and
resigned his post.
Sám Khán, likewise, remembering, with feelings of awe and
wonder, the reassuring words addressed to him by the Báb, ordered
his men to leave the barracks immediately, and swore, as he left the
courtyard, never again, even at the cost of his life, to repeat that
act. Áqá Ján-i-Khamsih, colonel of the body-guard,
volunteered to replace him. On the same wall and in the same manner
the Báb and His companion were again suspended, while the new
regiment formed in line and opened fire upon them. This time,
however, their breasts were riddled with bullets, and their bodies
completely dissected, with the exception of their faces which were
but little marred. “O wayward generation!”
were the last
words of the Báb to the gazing multitude, as the regiment prepared
to fire its volley, “Had you believed in Me every one of you
would have followed the example of this youth, who stood in rank
above most of you, and would have willingly sacrificed himself in My
path. The day will come when you will have recognized Me; that day I
shall have ceased to be with you.”
Nor was this all. The very moment the shots were fired a gale of
exceptional violence arose and swept over the city. From noon till
night a whirlwind of dust obscured the light of the sun, and blinded
the eyes of the people. In Shíráz an “earthquake,”
foreshadowed in no less weighty a Book than the Revelation of St.
John, occurred in 1268 A.H. which threw the whole city into turmoil
and wrought havoc amongst its people, a havoc that was greatly
aggravated by the outbreak of cholera, by famine and other
afflictions. In that same year no less than two hundred and fifty of
the firing squad, that had replaced Sám Khán’s regiment,
met their death, together with their officers, in a terrible
earthquake, while the remaining five hundred suffered, three years
later, as a punishment for their mutiny, the same fate as that which
their hands had inflicted upon the Báb. To insure that none of them
had survived, they were riddled with a second volley, after which
their bodies, pierced with spears and lances, were exposed to the
gaze of the people of Tabríz. The prime instigator of the Báb’s
death, the implacable Amír-Niẓám, together with his brother, his
chief accomplice, met their death within two years of that savage
act.
On the evening of the very day of the Báb’s execution, which fell
on the ninth of July 1850 (28th of Sha‘bán 1266 A.H.),
during the thirty-first year of His age and the seventh of His
ministry, the mangled bodies were transferred from the courtyard of
the barracks to the edge of the moat outside the gate of the city.
Four companies, each consisting of ten sentinels, were ordered to
keep watch in turn over them. On the following morning the Russian
Consul in Tabríz visited the spot, and ordered the artist who had
accompanied him to make a drawing of the remains as they lay beside
the moat. In the middle of the following night a follower of the Báb,
Ḥájí Sulaymán Khán, succeeded, through the
instrumentality of a certain Ḥájí Alláh-Yár, in removing the
bodies to the silk factory owned by one of the believers of Mílán,
and laid them, the next day, in a specially made wooden casket, which
he later transferred to a place of safety. Meanwhile the mullás were
boastfully proclaiming from the pulpits that, whereas the holy body
of the Immaculate Imám would be preserved from beasts of prey and
from all creeping things, this man’s body had been devoured by wild
animals. No sooner had the news of the transfer of the remains of the
Báb and of His fellow-sufferer been communicated to Bahá’u’lláh
than He ordered that same Sulaymán Khán to bring them to
Ṭihrán, where they were taken to the Imám-Zádih-Ḥasan, from
whence they were removed to different places, until the time when, in
pursuance of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s instructions, they were
transferred to the Holy Land, and were permanently and ceremoniously
laid to rest by Him in a specially erected mausoleum on the slopes of
Mt. Carmel.
Thus ended a life which posterity will recognize as standing at the
confluence of two universal prophetic cycles, the Adamic Cycle
stretching back as far as the first dawnings of the world’s
recorded religious history and the Bahá’í Cycle destined to
propel itself across the unborn reaches of time for a period of no
less than five thousand centuries. The apotheosis in which such a
life attained its consummation marks, as already observed, the
culmination of the most heroic phase of the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í
Dispensation. It can, moreover, be regarded in no other light except
as the most dramatic, the most tragic event transpiring within the
entire range of the first Bahá’í century. Indeed it can be
rightly acclaimed as unparalleled in the annals of the lives of all
the Founders of the world’s existing religious systems.
Tributes paid to His memory
So momentous an event could hardly fail to arouse widespread and keen
interest even beyond the confines of the land in which it had
occurred. “C’est un des plus magnifiques exemples de courage
qu’il ait été donné à l’humanité de contempler,” is the
testimony recorded by a Christian scholar and government official,
who had lived in Persia and had familiarized himself with the life
and teachings of the Báb, “et c’est aussi une admirable preuve
de l’amour que notre héros portait à ses concitoyens. Il s’est
sacrifié pour l’humanité: pour elle il a donné son corps et son
âme, pour elle il a subi les privations, les affronts, les injures,
la torture et le martyre. Il a scellé de son sang le pacte de la
fraternité universelle, et comme Jésus il a payé de sa vie
l’annonce du règne de la concorde, de l’équité et de l’amour
du prochain.” “Un fait étrange, unique dans les annales de
l’humanité,” is a further testimony from the pen of that same
scholar commenting on the circumstances attending the Báb’s
martyrdom. “A veritable miracle,” is the pronouncement made by a
noted French Orientalist. “A true God-man,” is the verdict of a
famous British traveler and writer. “The finest product of his
country,” is the tribute paid Him by a noted French publicist.
“That Jesus of the age … a prophet, and more than a prophet,”
is the judgment passed by a distinguished English divine. “The most
important religious movement since the foundation of Christianity,”
is the possibility that was envisaged for the Faith the Báb had
established by that far-famed Oxford scholar, the late Master of
Balliol.
“Many persons from all parts of the world,”
is
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s written assertion, “set out for
Persia and began to investigate wholeheartedly the matter.”
The
Czar of Russia, a contemporary chronicler has written, had even,
shortly before the Báb’s martyrdom, instructed the Russian Consul
in Tabríz to fully inquire into, and report the circumstances of so
startling a Movement, a commission that could not be carried out in
view of the Báb’s execution. In countries as remote as those of
Western Europe an interest no less profound was kindled, and spread
with great rapidity to literary, artistic, diplomatic and
intellectual circles. “All Europe,” attests the above-mentioned
French publicist, “was stirred to pity and indignation … Among
the littérateurs of my generation, in the Paris of 1890, the
martyrdom of the Báb was still as fresh a topic as had been the
first news of His death. We wrote poems about Him. Sarah Bernhardt
entreated Catulle Mendès for a play on the theme of this historic
tragedy.” A Russian poetess, member of the Philosophic, Oriental
and Bibliological Societies of St. Petersburg, published in 1903 a
drama entitled “The Báb,” which a year later was played in one
of the principal theatres of that city, was subsequently given
publicity in London, was translated into French in Paris, and into
German by the poet Fiedler, was presented again, soon after the
Russian Revolution, in the Folk Theatre in Leningrad, and succeeded
in arousing the genuine sympathy and interest of the renowned
Tolstoy, whose eulogy of the poem was later published in the Russian
press.
Parallel between His mission and that of Jesus Christ
It would indeed be no exaggeration to say that nowhere in the whole
compass of the world’s religious literature, except in the Gospels,
do we find any record relating to the death of any of the
religion-founders of the past comparable to the martyrdom suffered by
the Prophet of Shíráz. So strange, so inexplicable a
phenomenon, attested by eye-witnesses, corroborated by men of
recognized standing, and acknowledged by government as well as
unofficial historians among the people who had sworn undying
hostility to the Bábí Faith, may be truly regarded as the most
marvelous manifestation of the unique potentialities with which a
Dispensation promised by all the Dispensations of the past had been
endowed. The passion of Jesus Christ, and indeed His whole public
ministry, alone offer a parallel to the Mission and death of the Báb,
a parallel which no student of comparative religion can fail to
perceive or ignore. In the youthfulness and meekness of the
Inaugurator of the Bábí Dispensation; in the extreme brevity and
turbulence of His public ministry; in the dramatic swiftness with
which that ministry moved towards its climax; in the apostolic order
which He instituted, and the primacy which He conferred on one of its
members; in the boldness of His challenge to the time-honored
conventions, rites and laws which had been woven into the fabric of
the religion He Himself had been born into; in the rôle which an
officially recognized and firmly entrenched religious hierarchy
played as chief instigator of the outrages which He was made to
suffer; in the indignities heaped upon Him; in the suddenness of His
arrest; in the interrogation to which He was subjected; in the
derision poured, and the scourging inflicted, upon Him; in the public
affront He sustained; and, finally, in His ignominious suspension
before the gaze of a hostile multitude — in all these we cannot fail
to discern a remarkable similarity to the distinguishing features of
the career of Jesus Christ.
It should be remembered, however, that apart from the miracle
associated with the Báb’s execution, He, unlike the Founder of the
Christian religion, is not only to be regarded as the independent
Author of a divinely revealed Dispensation, but must also be
recognized as the Herald of a new Era and the Inaugurator of a great
universal prophetic cycle. Nor should the important fact be
overlooked that, whereas the chief adversaries of Jesus Christ, in
His lifetime, were the Jewish rabbis and their associates, the forces
arrayed against the Báb represented the combined civil and
ecclesiastical powers of Persia, which, from the moment of His
declaration to the hour of His death, persisted, unitedly and by
every means at their disposal, in conspiring against the upholders
and in vilifying the tenets of His Revelation.
Significance of His mission
The Báb, acclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh as the “Essence of
Essences,”
the “Sea of Seas,”
the “Point round
Whom the realities of the Prophets and Messengers revolve,”
“from Whom God hath caused to proceed the knowledge of all that
was and shall be,”
Whose “rank excelleth that of all the
Prophets,”
and Whose “Revelation transcendeth the
comprehension and understanding of all their chosen ones,”
had
delivered His Message and discharged His mission. He Who was, in the
words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the “Morn of Truth”
and
“Harbinger of the Most Great Light,”
Whose advent at once
signalized the termination of the “Prophetic Cycle”
and
the inception of the “Cycle of Fulfillment,”
had
simultaneously through His Revelation banished the shades of night
that had descended upon His country, and proclaimed the impending
rise of that Incomparable Orb Whose radiance was to envelop the whole
of mankind. He, as affirmed by Himself, “the Primal Point from
which have been generated all created things,”
“one of the
sustaining pillars of the Primal Word of God,”
the “Mystic
Fane,”
the “Great Announcement,”
the “Flame of
that supernal Light that glowed upon Sinai,”
the “Remembrance
of God”
concerning Whom “a separate Covenant hath been
established with each and every Prophet”
had, through His
advent, at once fulfilled the promise of all ages and ushered in the
consummation of all Revelations. He the “Qá’im” (He Who
ariseth) promised to the Shí‘ahs, the “Mihdí” (One Who is
guided) awaited by the Sunnís, the “Return of John the Baptist”
expected by the Christians, the “Úshídar-Máh” referred to in
the Zoroastrian scriptures, the “Return of Elijah” anticipated by
the Jews, Whose Revelation was to show forth “the signs and
tokens of all the Prophets”
, Who was to “manifest the
perfection of Moses, the radiance of Jesus and the patience of Job”
had appeared, proclaimed His Cause, been mercilessly persecuted and
died gloriously. The “Second Woe,”
spoken of in the
Apocalypse of St. John the Divine, had, at long last, appeared, and
the first of the two “Messengers,”
Whose appearance had
been prophesied in the Qur’án, had been sent down. The first
“Trumpet-Blast”
, destined to smite the earth with
extermination, announced in the latter Book, had finally been
sounded. “The Inevitable,”
“The Catastrophe,”
“The Resurrection,”
“The Earthquake of the Last
Hour,”
foretold by that same Book, had all come to pass. The
“clear tokens”
had been “sent down,”
and the
“Spirit”
had “breathed,”
and the “souls”
had “waked up,”
and the “heaven”
had been
“cleft,”
and the “angels”
had “ranged in
order,”
and the “stars”
had been “blotted out,”
and the “earth”
had “cast forth her burden,”
and “Paradise”
had been “brought near,”
and
“hell”
had been “made to blaze,”
and the “Book”
had been “set,”
and the “Bridge”
had been “laid
out,”
and the “Balance”
had been “set up,”
and the “mountains scattered in dust.”
The “cleansing
of the Sanctuary,”
prophesied by Daniel and confirmed by Jesus
Christ in His reference to “the abomination of desolation,”
had been accomplished. The “day whose length shall be a thousand
years,”
foretold by the Apostle of God in His Book, had
terminated. The “forty and two months,”
during which the
“Holy City,”
as predicted by St. John the Divine, would be
trodden under foot, had elapsed. The “time of the end”
had
been ushered in, and the first of the “two Witnesses”
into
Whom, “after three days and a half the Spirit of Life from God”
would enter, had arisen and had “ascended up to heaven in a
cloud.”
The “remaining twenty and five letters to be made
manifest,”
according to Islamic tradition, out of the “twenty
and seven letters”
of which Knowledge has been declared to
consist, had been revealed. The “Man Child,”
mentioned in
the Book of Revelation, destined to “rule all nations with a rod
of iron,”
had released, through His coming, the creative
energies which, reinforced by the effusions of a swiftly succeeding
and infinitely mightier Revelation, were to instill into the entire
human race the capacity to achieve its organic unification, attain
maturity and thereby reach the final stage in its age-long evolution.
The clarion-call addressed to the “concourse of kings and of the
sons of kings,”
marking the inception of a process which,
accelerated by Bahá’u’lláh’s subsequent warnings to the
entire company of the monarchs of East and West, was to produce so
widespread a revolution in the fortunes of royalty, had been raised
in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’. The “Order,”
whose
foundation the Promised One was to establish in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas,
and the features of which the Center of the Covenant was to delineate
in His Testament, and whose administrative framework the entire body
of His followers are now erecting, had been categorically announced
in the Persian Bayán. The laws which were designed, on the one hand,
to abolish at a stroke the privileges and ceremonials, the ordinances
and institutions of a superannuated Dispensation, and to bridge, on
the other, the gap between an obsolete system and the institutions of
a world-encompassing Order destined to supersede it, had been clearly
formulated and proclaimed. The Covenant which, despite the determined
assaults launched against it, succeeded, unlike all previous
Dispensations, in preserving the integrity of the Faith of its
Author, and in paving the way for the advent of the One Who was to be
its Center and Object, had been firmly and irrevocably established.
The light which, throughout successive periods, was to propagate
itself gradually from its cradle as far as Vancouver in the West and
the China Sea in the East, and to diffuse its radiance as far as
Iceland in the North and the Tasman Sea in the South, had broken. The
forces of darkness, at first confined to the concerted hostility of
the civil and ecclesiastical powers of Shí‘ah Persia, gathering
momentum, at a later stage, through the avowed and persistent
opposition of the Caliph of Islám and the Sunní hierarchy in
Turkey, and destined to culminate in the fierce antagonism of the
sacerdotal orders associated with other and still more powerful
religious systems, had launched their initial assault. The nucleus of
the divinely ordained, world-embracing Community — a Community whose
infant strength had already plucked asunder the fetters of Shí‘ah
orthodoxy, and which was, with every expansion in the range of its
fellowship, to seek and obtain a wider and still more significant
recognition of its claims to be the world religion of the future, had
been formed and was slowly crystallizing. And, lastly, the seed,
endowed by the Hand of Omnipotence with such vast potentialities,
though rudely trampled under foot and seemingly perished from the
face of the earth, had, through this very process, been vouchsafed
the opportunity to germinate and remanifest itself, in the shape of a
still more compelling Revelation — a Revelation destined to blossom
forth, in a later period into the flourishing institutions of a
world-wide administrative System, and to ripen, in the Golden Age as
yet unborn, into mighty agencies functioning in consonance with the
principles of a world-unifying, world-redeeming Order.
The Faith that had stirred a whole nation to its depth, for whose
sake thousands of precious and heroic souls had been immolated and on
whose altar He Who had been its Author had sacrificed His life, was
now being subjected to the strain and stress of yet another crisis of
extreme violence and far-reaching consequences. It was one of those
periodic crises which, occurring throughout a whole century,
succeeded in momentarily eclipsing the splendor of the Faith and in
almost disrupting the structure of its organic institutions.
Invariably sudden, often unexpected, seemingly fatal to both its
spirit and its life, these inevitable manifestations of the
mysterious evolution of a world Religion, intensely alive,
challenging in its claims, revolutionizing in its tenets, struggling
against overwhelming odds, have either been externally precipitated
by the malice of its avowed antagonists or internally provoked by the
unwisdom of its friends, the apostasy of its supporters, or the
defection of some of the most highly placed amongst the kith and kin
of its founders. No matter how disconcerting to the great mass of its
loyal adherents, however much trumpeted by its adversaries as
symptoms of its decline and impending dissolution, these admitted
setbacks and reverses, from which it has time and again so tragically
suffered, have, as we look back upon them, failed to arrest its march
or impair its unity. Heavy indeed has been the toll which they
exacted, unspeakable the agonies they engendered, widespread and
paralyzing for a time the consternation they provoked. Yet, viewed in
their proper perspective, each of them can be confidently pronounced
a blessing in disguise, affording a providential means for the
release of a fresh outpouring of celestial strength, a miraculous
escape from imminent and still more dreadful calamities, an
instrument for the fulfillment of age-old prophecies, an agency for
the purification and revitalization of the life of the community, an
impetus for the enlargement of its limits and the propagation of its
influence, and a compelling evidence of the indestructibility of its
cohesive strength. Sometimes at the height of the crisis itself, more
often when the crisis was past, the significance of these trials has
manifested itself to men’s eyes, and the necessity of such
experiences has been demonstrated, far and wide and beyond the shadow
of a doubt, to both friend and foe. Seldom, if indeed at any time,
has the mystery underlying these portentous, God-sent upheavals
remained undisclosed, or the profound purpose and meaning of their
occurrence been left hidden from the minds of men.
Such a severe ordeal the Faith of the Báb, still in the earliest
stages of its infancy, was now beginning to experience. Maligned and
hounded from the moment it was born, deprived in its earliest days of
the sustaining strength of the majority of its leading supporters,
stunned by the tragic and sudden removal of its Founder, reeling
under the cruel blows it had successively sustained in Mázindarán,
Ṭihrán, Nayríz and Zanján, a sorely persecuted Faith was about
to be subjected through the shameful act of a fanatical and
irresponsible Bábí, to a humiliation such as it had never before
known. To the trials it had undergone was now added the oppressive
load of a fresh calamity, unprecedented in its gravity, disgraceful
in its character, and devastating in its immediate consequences.
Circumstances attending the attack on Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh
Obsessed by the bitter tragedy of the martyrdom of his beloved
Master, driven by a frenzy of despair to avenge that odious deed, and
believing the author and instigator of that crime to be none other
than the Sháh himself, a certain Ṣádiq-i-Tabrízí, an
assistant in a confectioner’s shop in Ṭihrán, proceeded on an
August day (August 15, 1852), together with his accomplice, an
equally obscure youth named Fatḥu’lláh-i-Qumí, to Níyávarán
where the imperial army had encamped and the sovereign was in
residence, and there, waiting by the roadside, in the guise of an
innocent bystander, fired a round of shot from his pistol at the
Sháh, shortly after the latter had emerged on horseback from
the palace grounds for his morning promenade. The weapon the
assailant employed demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt the
folly of that half-demented youth, and clearly indicated that no man
of sound judgment could have possibly instigated so senseless an act.
The whole of Níyávarán where the imperial court and troops had
congregated was, as a result of this assault, plunged into an
unimaginable tumult. The ministers of the state, headed by Mírzá
Áqá Khán-i-Núrí, the I‘timádu’d-Dawlih, the
successor of the Amír-Niẓám, rushed horror-stricken to the side
of their wounded sovereign. The fanfare of the trumpets, the rolling
of the drums and the shrill piping of the fifes summoned the hosts of
His Imperial Majesty on all sides. The Sháh’s attendants,
some on horseback, others on foot, poured into the palace grounds.
Pandemonium reigned in which every one issued orders, none listened,
none obeyed, nor understood anything. Ardishír Mírzá, the
governor of Ṭihrán, having in the meantime already ordered his
troops to patrol the deserted streets of the capital, barred the
gates of the citadel as well as of the city, charged his batteries
and feverishly dispatched a messenger to ascertain the veracity of
the wild rumors that were circulating amongst the populace, and to
ask for special instructions.
No sooner had this act been perpetrated than its shadow fell across
the entire body of the Bábí community. A storm of public horror,
disgust and resentment, heightened by the implacable hostility of the
mother of the youthful sovereign, swept the nation, casting aside all
possibility of even the most elementary inquiry into the origins and
the instigators of the attempt. A sign, a whisper, was sufficient to
implicate the innocent and loose upon him the most abominable
afflictions. An army of foes — ecclesiastics, state officials and
people, united in relentless hate, and watching for an opportunity to
discredit and annihilate a dreaded adversary — had, at long last,
been afforded the pretext for which it was longing. Now it could
achieve its malevolent purpose. Though the Faith had, from its
inception, disclaimed any intention of usurping the rights and
prerogatives of the state; though its exponents and disciples had
sedulously avoided any act that might arouse the slightest suspicion
of a desire to wage a holy war, or to evince an aggressive attitude,
yet its enemies, deliberately ignoring the numerous evidences of the
marked restraint exercised by the followers of a persecuted religion,
proved themselves capable of inflicting atrocities as barbarous as
those which will ever remain associated with the bloody episodes of
Mázindarán, Nayríz and Zanján. To what depths of infamy and
cruelty would not this same enemy be willing to descend now that an
act so treasonable, so audacious had been committed? What accusations
would it not be prompted to level at, and what treatment would it not
mete out to, those who, however unjustifiably, could be associated
with so heinous a crime against one who, in his person, combined the
chief magistracy of the realm and the trusteeship of the Hidden Imám?
Massacre of the Bábís in Ṭihrán
The reign of terror which ensued was revolting beyond description.
The spirit of revenge that animated those who had unleashed its
horrors seemed insatiable. Its repercussions echoed as far as the
press of Europe, branding with infamy its bloodthirsty participants.
The Grand Vizir, wishing to reduce the chances of blood revenge,
divided the work of executing those condemned to death among the
princes and nobles, his principal fellow-ministers, the generals and
officers of the Court, the representatives of the sacerdotal and
merchant classes, the artillery and the infantry. Even the Sháh
himself had his allotted victim, though, to save the dignity of the
crown, he delegated the steward of his household to fire the fatal
shot on his behalf. Ardishír Mírzá, on his part, picketed
the gates of the capital, and ordered the guards to scrutinize the
faces of all those who sought to leave it. Summoning to his presence
the kalantar, the dárúghih and the kad-khudás he bade
them search out and arrest every one suspected of being a Bábí. A
youth named ‘Abbás, a former servant of a well-known adherent of
the Faith, was, on threat of inhuman torture, induced to walk the
streets of Ṭihrán, and point out every one he recognized as being
a Bábí. He was even coerced into denouncing any individual whom he
thought would be willing and able to pay a heavy bribe to secure his
freedom.
The first to suffer on that calamitous day was the ill-fated Ṣádiq,
who was instantly slain on the scene of his attempted crime. His body
was tied to the tail of a mule and dragged all the way to Ṭihrán,
where it was hewn into two halves, each of which was suspended and
exposed to the public view, while the Ṭihránís were invited by
the city authorities to mount the ramparts and gaze upon the
mutilated corpse. Molten lead was poured down the throat of his
accomplice, after having subjected him to the torture of red-hot
pincers and limb-rending screws. A comrade of his, Ḥájí Qásim,
was stripped of his clothes, lighted candles were thrust into holes
made in his flesh, and was paraded before the multitude who shouted
and cursed him. Others had their eyes gouged out, were sawn asunder,
strangled, blown from the mouths of cannons, chopped in pieces, hewn
apart with hatchets and maces, shod with horse shoes, bayoneted and
stoned. Torture-mongers vied with each other in running the gamut of
brutality, while the populace, into whose hands the bodies of the
hapless victims were delivered, would close in upon their prey, and
would so mutilate them as to leave no trace of their original form.
The executioners, though accustomed to their own gruesome task, would
themselves be amazed at the fiendish cruelty of the populace. Women
and children could be seen led down the streets by their
executioners, their flesh in ribbons, with candles burning in their
wounds, singing with ringing voices before the silent spectators:
“Verily from God we come, and unto Him we return!” As some of the
children expired on the way their tormentors would fling their bodies
under the feet of their fathers and sisters who, proudly treading
upon them, would not deign to give them a second glance. A father,
according to the testimony of a distinguished French writer, rather
than abjure his faith, preferred to have the throats of his two young
sons, both already covered with blood, slit upon his breast, as he
lay on the ground, whilst the elder of the two, a lad of fourteen,
vigorously pressing his right of seniority, demanded to be the first
to lay down his life.
An Austrian officer, Captain Von Goumoens, in the employ of the Sháh
at that time, was, it is reliably stated, so horrified at the
cruelties he was compelled to witness that he tendered his
resignation. “Follow me, my friend,” is the Captain’s own
testimony in a letter he wrote two weeks after the attempt in
question, which was published in the “Soldatenfreund,” “you who
lay claim to a heart and European ethics, follow me to the unhappy
ones who, with gouged-out eyes, must eat, on the scene of the deed,
without any sauce, their own amputated ears; or whose teeth are torn
out with inhuman violence by the hand of the executioner; or whose
bare skulls are simply crushed by blows from a hammer; or where the
bazaar is illuminated with unhappy victims, because on right and left
the people dig deep holes in their breasts and shoulders, and insert
burning wicks in the wounds. I saw some dragged in chains through the
bazaar, preceded by a military band, in whom these wicks had burned
so deep that now the fat flickered convulsively in the wound like a
newly extinguished lamp. Not seldom it happens that the unwearying
ingenuity of the Oriental leads to fresh tortures. They will skin the
soles of the Bábí’s feet, soak the wounds in boiling oil, shoe
the foot like the hoof of a horse, and compel the victim to run. No
cry escaped from the victim’s breast; the torment is endured in
dark silence by the numbed sensation of the fanatic; now he must run;
the body cannot endure what the soul has endured; he falls. Give him
the coup de grâce! Put him out of his pain! No! The executioner
swings the whip, and — I myself have had to witness it — the unhappy
victim of hundredfold tortures runs! This is the beginning of the
end. As for the end itself, they hang the scorched and perforated
bodies by their hands and feet to a tree head downwards, and now
every Persian may try his marksmanship to his heart’s content from
a fixed but not too proximate distance on the noble quarry placed at
his disposal. I saw corpses torn by nearly one hundred and fifty
bullets.” “When I read over again,” he continues, “what I
have written, I am overcome by the thought that those who are with
you in our dearly beloved Austria may doubt the full truth of the
picture, and accuse me of exaggeration. Would to God that I had not
lived to see it! But by the duties of my profession I was unhappily
often, only too often, a witness of these abominations. At present I
never leave my house, in order not to meet with fresh scenes of
horror … Since my whole soul revolts against such infamy … I will
no longer maintain my connection with the scene of such crimes.”
Little wonder that a man as far-famed as Renan should, in his “Les
Apôtres” have characterized the hideous butchery perpetrated in a
single day, during the great massacre of Ṭihrán, as “a day
perhaps unparalleled in the history of the world!”
The hand that was stretched to deal so grievous a blow to the
adherents of a sorely-tried Faith did not confine itself to the rank
and file of the Báb’s persecuted followers. It was raised with
equal fury and determination against, and struck down with equal
force, the few remaining leaders who had survived the winnowing winds
of adversity that had already laid low so vast a number of the
supporters of the Faith. Ṭáhirih, that immortal heroine who had
already shed imperishable luster alike on her sex and on the Cause
she had espoused, was swept into, and ultimately engulfed by, the
raging storm. Siyyid Ḥusayn, the amanuensis of the Báb, the
companion of His exile, the trusted repository of His last wishes,
and the witness of the prodigies attendant upon His martyrdom, fell
likewise a victim of its fury. That hand had even the temerity to
lift itself against the towering figure of Bahá’u’lláh. But
though it laid hold of Him it failed to strike Him down. It
imperilled His life, it imprinted on His body indelible marks of a
pitiless cruelty, but was impotent to cut short a career that was
destined not only to keep alive the fire which the Spirit of the Báb
had kindled, but to produce a conflagration that would at once
consummate and outshine the glories of His Revelation.
Role played by Bahá’u’lláh during the Báb’s ministry
During those somber and agonizing days when the Báb was no more,
when the luminaries that had shone in the firmament of His Faith had
been successively extinguished, when His nominee, a “bewildered
fugitive, in the guise of a dervish, with kashkúl
(alms-basket) in hand” roamed the mountains and plains in the
neighborhood of Rasht, Bahá’u’lláh, by reason of the
acts He had performed, appeared in the eyes of a vigilant enemy as
its most redoubtable adversary and as the sole hope of an as yet
unextirpated heresy. His seizure and death had now become imperative.
He it was Who, scarce three months after the Faith was born,
received, through the envoy of the Báb, Mullá Ḥusayn, the scroll
which bore to Him the first tidings of a newly announced Revelation,
Who instantly acclaimed its truth, and arose to champion its cause.
It was to His native city and dwelling place that the steps of that
envoy were first directed, as the place which enshrined “a Mystery
of such transcendent holiness as neither Ḥijáz nor Shíráz
can hope to rival.” It was Mullá Ḥusayn’s report of the
contact thus established which had been received with such exultant
joy by the Báb, and had brought such reassurance to His heart as to
finally decide Him to undertake His contemplated pilgrimage to Mecca
and Medina. Bahá’u’lláh alone was the object and the center of
the cryptic allusions, the glowing eulogies, the fervid prayers, the
joyful announcements and the dire warnings recorded in both the
Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ and the Bayán, designed to be respectively the
first and last written testimonials to the glory with which God was
soon to invest Him. It was He Who, through His correspondence with
the Author of the newly founded Faith, and His intimate association
with the most distinguished amongst its disciples, such as Vaḥíd,
Ḥujjat, Quddús, Mullá Ḥusayn and Ṭáhirih, was able to foster
its growth, elucidate its principles, reinforce its ethical
foundations, fulfill its urgent requirements, avert some of the
immediate dangers threatening it and participate effectually in its
rise and consolidation. It was to Him, “the one Object of our
adoration and love” that the Prophet-pilgrim, on His return to
Búshihr, alluded when, dismissing Quddús from His presence,
He announced to him the double joy of attaining the presence of their
Beloved and of quaffing the cup of martyrdom. He it was Who, in the
hey-day of His life, flinging aside every consideration of earthly
fame, wealth and position, careless of danger, and risking the
obloquy of His caste, arose to identify Himself, first in Ṭihrán
and later in His native province of Mázindarán, with the cause of
an obscure and proscribed sect; won to its support a large number of
the officials and notables of Núr, not excluding His own associates
and relatives; fearlessly and persuasively expounded its truths to
the disciples of the illustrious mujtahid, Mullá Muḥammad;
enlisted under its banner the mujtahid’s appointed representatives;
secured, in consequence of this act, the unreserved loyalty of a
considerable number of ecclesiastical dignitaries, government
officers, peasants and traders; and succeeded in challenging, in the
course of a memorable interview, the mujtahid himself. It was solely
due to the potency of the written message entrusted by Him to Mullá
Muḥammad Mihdíy-i-Kandí and delivered to the Báb while in the
neighborhood of the village of Kulayn, that the soul of the
disappointed Captive was able to rid itself, at an hour of
uncertainty and suspense, of the anguish that had settled upon it
ever since His arrest in Shíráz. He it was Who, for the sake
of Ṭáhirih and her imprisoned companions, willingly submitted
Himself to a humiliating confinement, lasting several days — the
first He was made to suffer — in the house of one of the kad-khudás
of Ṭihrán. It was to His caution, foresight and ability that must
be ascribed her successful escape from Qazvín, her deliverance from
her opponents, her safe arrival in His home, and her subsequent
removal to a place of safety in the vicinity of the capital from
whence she proceeded to Khurásán. It was into His presence
that Mullá Ḥusayn was secretly ushered upon his arrival in Ṭihrán,
after which interview he traveled to Ádhirbáyján on his
visit to the Báb then confined in the fortress of Máh-Kú. He it
was Who unobtrusively and unerringly directed the proceedings of the
Conference of Badasht; Who entertained as His guests Quddús,
Ṭáhirih and the eighty-one disciples who had gathered on that
occasion; Who revealed every day a Tablet and bestowed on each of the
participants a new name; Who faced unaided the assault of a mob of
more than five hundred villagers in Níyálá; Who shielded Quddús
from the fury of his assailants; Who succeeded in restoring a part of
the property which the enemy had plundered and Who insured the
protection and safety of the continually harassed and much abused
Ṭáhirih. Against Him was kindled the anger of Muḥammad Sháh
who, as a result of the persistent representations of
mischief-makers, was at last induced to order His arrest and summon
Him to the capital — a summons that was destined to remain
unfulfilled as a result of the sudden death of the sovereign. It was
to His counsels and exhortations, addressed to the occupants of
Shaykh Ṭabarsí, who had welcomed Him with such
reverence and love during His visit to that Fort, that must be
attributed, in no small measure, the spirit evinced by its heroic
defenders, while it was to His explicit instructions that they owed
the miraculous release of Quddús and his consequent association with
them in the stirring exploits that have immortalized the Mázindarán
upheaval. It was for the sake of those same defenders, whom He had
intended to join, that He suffered His second imprisonment, this time
in the masjid of Ámul to which He was led, amidst the tumult raised
by no less than four thousand spectators, — for their sake that He
was bastinadoed in the namáz-khánih of the mujtahid of that
town until His feet bled, and later confined in the private residence
of its governor; for their sake that He was bitterly denounced by the
leading mullá, and insulted by the mob who, besieging the governor’s
residence, pelted Him with stones, and hurled in His face the foulest
invectives. He alone was the One alluded to by Quddús who, upon his
arrival at the Fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, uttered, as
soon as he had dismounted and leaned against the shrine, the
prophetic verse “The Baqíyyatu’lláh (the Remnant of God) will
be best for you if ye are of those who believe.” He alone was the
Object of that prodigious eulogy, that masterly interpretation of the
Ṣád of Ṣamad, penned in part, in that same Fort by that same
youthful hero, under the most distressing circumstances, and
equivalent in dimensions to six times the volume of the Qur’án. It
was to the date of His impending Revelation that the Lawḥ-i-Ḥurúfát,
revealed in Chihríq by the Báb, in honor of Dayyán,
abstrusely alluded, and in which the mystery of the “Mustagháth”
was unraveled. It was to the attainment of His presence that the
attention of another disciple, Mullá Báqir, one of the Letters of
the Living, was expressly directed by none other than the Báb
Himself. It was exclusively to His care that the documents of the
Báb, His pen-case, His seals, and agate rings, together with a
scroll on which He had penned, in the form of a pentacle, no less
than three hundred and sixty derivatives of the word Bahá, were
delivered, in conformity with instructions He Himself had issued
prior to His departure from Chihríq. It was solely due to His
initiative, and in strict accordance with His instructions, that the
precious remains of the Báb were safely transferred from Tabríz to
the capital, and were concealed and safeguarded with the utmost
secrecy and care throughout the turbulent years following His
martyrdom. And finally, it was He Who, in the days preceding the
attempt on the life of the Sháh, had been instrumental, while
sojourning in Karbilá, in spreading, with that same enthusiasm and
ability that had distinguished His earlier exertions in Mázindarán,
the teachings of His departed Leader, in safeguarding the interests
of His Faith, in reviving the zeal of its grief-stricken followers,
and in organizing the forces of its scattered and bewildered
adherents.
Such a man, with such a record of achievements to His credit, could
not, indeed did not, escape either the detection or the fury of a
vigilant and fully aroused enemy. Afire from the very beginning with
an uncontrollable enthusiasm for the Cause He had espoused;
conspicuously fearless in His advocacy of the rights of the
downtrodden; in the full bloom of youth; immensely resourceful;
matchless in His eloquence; endowed with inexhaustible energy and
penetrating judgment; possessed of the riches, and enjoying, in full
measure, the esteem, power and prestige associated with an enviably
high and noble position, and yet contemptuous of all earthly pomp,
rewards, vanities and possessions; closely associated, on the one
hand, through His regular correspondence with the Author of the Faith
He had risen to champion, and intimately acquainted, on the other,
with the hopes and fears, the plans and activities of its leading
exponents; at one time advancing openly and assuming a position of
acknowledged leadership in the forefront of the forces struggling for
that Faith’s emancipation, at another deliberately drawing back
with consummate discretion in order to remedy, with greater efficacy,
an awkward or dangerous situation; at all times vigilant, ready and
indefatigable in His exertions to preserve the integrity of that
Faith, to resolve its problems, to plead its cause, to galvanize its
followers, and to confound its antagonists, Bahá’u’lláh, at
this supremely critical hour in its fortunes, was at last stepping
into the very center of the stage so tragically vacated by the Báb — a
stage on which He was destined, for no less a period than forty
years, to play a part unapproached in its majesty, pathos and
splendor by any of the great Founders of the world’s historic
religions.
Already so conspicuous and towering a figure had, through the
accusations levelled against Him, kindled the wrath of Muḥammad
Sháh, who, after having heard what had transpired in Badasht,
had ordered His arrest, in a number of farmáns addressed to the
kháns of Mázindarán, and expressed his determination to put
Him to death. Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, previously alienated from
the Vazír (Bahá’u’lláh’s father), and infuriated by his own
failure to appropriate by fraud an estate that belonged to
Bahá’u’lláh, had sworn eternal enmity to the One Who had so
brilliantly succeeded in frustrating his evil designs. The
Amír-Niẓám, moreover, fully aware of the pervasive influence of
so energetic an opponent, had, in the presence of a distinguished
gathering, accused Him of having inflicted, as a result of His
activities, a loss of no less than five kurúrs upon the government,
and had expressly requested Him, at a critical moment in the fortunes
of the Faith, to temporarily transfer His residence to Karbilá.
Mírzá Áqá Khán-i-Núrí, who succeeded the Amír-Niẓám,
had endeavored, at the very outset of his ministry, to effect a
reconciliation between his government and the One Whom he regarded as
the most resourceful of the Báb’s disciples. Little wonder that
when, later, an act of such gravity and temerity was committed, a
suspicion as dire as it was unfounded, should at once have crept into
the minds of the Sháh, his government, his court, and his
people against Bahá’u’lláh. Foremost among them was the mother
of the youthful sovereign, who, inflamed with anger, was openly
denouncing Him as the would-be murderer of her son.
Bahá’u’lláh, when that attempt had been made on the life of the
sovereign, was in Lavásán, the guest of the Grand Vizir, and was
staying in the village of Afchih when the momentous news
reached Him. Refusing to heed the advice of the Grand Vizir’s
brother, Ja‘far-Qulí Khán, who was acting as His host, to
remain for a time concealed in that neighborhood, and dispensing with
the good offices of the messenger specially dispatched to insure His
safety, He rode forth, the following morning, with cool intrepidity,
to the headquarters of the Imperial army which was then stationed in
Níyávarán, in the Shimírán district. In the village of
Zarkandih He was met by, and conducted to the home of, His
brother-in-law, Mírzá Majíd, who, at that time, was acting as
secretary to the Russian Minister, Prince Dolgorouki, and whose house
adjoined that of his superior. Apprised of Bahá’u’lláh’s
arrival the attendants of the Ḥájibu’d-Dawlih, Ḥájí ‘Alí
Khán, straightway informed their master, who in turn brought
the matter to the attention of his sovereign. The Sháh,
greatly amazed, dispatched his trusted officers to the Legation,
demanding that the Accused be forthwith delivered into his hands.
Refusing to comply with the wishes of the royal envoys, the Russian
Minister requested Bahá’u’lláh to proceed to the home of the
Grand Vizir, to whom he formally communicated his wish that the
safety of the Trust the Russian government was delivering into his
keeping should be insured. This purpose, however, was not achieved
because of the Grand Vizir’s apprehension that he might forfeit his
position if he extended to the Accused the protection demanded for
Him.
His arrest and imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál
Delivered into the hands of His enemies, this much-feared, bitterly
arraigned and illustrious Exponent of a perpetually hounded Faith was
now made to taste of the cup which He Who had been its recognized
Leader had drained to the dregs. From Níyávarán He was conducted
“on foot and in chains, with bared head and bare feet,” exposed
to the fierce rays of the midsummer sun, to the Síyáh-Chál
of Ṭihrán. On the way He several times was stripped of His outer
garments, was overwhelmed with ridicule, and pelted with stones. As
to the subterranean dungeon into which He was thrown, and which
originally had served as a reservoir of water for one of the public
baths of the capital, let His own words, recorded in His “Epistle
to the Son of the Wolf,” bear testimony to the ordeal which He
endured in that pestilential hole. “We were consigned for four
months to a place foul beyond comparison.… Upon Our arrival We were
first conducted along a pitch-black corridor, from whence We
descended three steep flights of stairs to the place of confinement
assigned to Us. The dungeon was wrapped in thick darkness, and Our
fellow-prisoners numbered nearly one hundred and fifty souls:
thieves, assassins and highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other
outlet than the passage by which We entered. No pen can depict that
place, nor any tongue describe its loathsome smell. Most of those men
had neither clothes nor bedding to lie on. God alone knoweth what
befell Us in that most foul-smelling and gloomy place!”
Bahá’u’lláh’s feet were placed in stocks, and around His neck
were fastened the Qará-Guhar chains of such galling weight that
their mark remained imprinted upon His body all the days of His life.
“A heavy chain,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself has
testified, “was placed about His neck by which He was chained to
five other Bábís; these fetters were locked together by strong,
very heavy, bolts and screws. His clothes were torn to pieces, also
His headdress. In this terrible condition He was kept for four
months.”
For three days and three nights, He was denied all
manner of food and drink. Sleep was impossible to Him. The place was
chill and damp, filthy, fever-stricken, infested with vermin, and
filled with a noisome stench. Animated by a relentless hatred His
enemies went even so far as to intercept and poison His food, in the
hope of obtaining the favor of the mother of their sovereign, His
most implacable foe — an attempt which, though it impaired His health
for years to come, failed to achieve its purpose. “‘Abdu’l-Bahá,”
Dr. J. E. Esslemont records in his book, “tells how, one day, He
was allowed to enter the prison yard to see His beloved Father, where
He came out for His daily exercise. Bahá’u’lláh was terribly
altered, so ill He could hardly walk, His hair and beard unkempt, His
neck galled and swollen from the pressure of a heavy steel collar,
His body bent by the weight of His chains.”
Arrest and martyrdom of Ṭáhirih
While Bahá’u’lláh was being so odiously and cruelly subjected
to the trials and tribulations inseparable from those tumultuous
days, another luminary of the Faith, the valiant Ṭáhirih, was
swiftly succumbing to their devastating power. Her meteoric career,
inaugurated in Karbilá, culminating in Badasht, was now about
to attain its final consummation in a martyrdom that may well rank as
one of the most affecting episodes in the most turbulent period of
Bahá’í history.
A scion of the highly reputed family of Ḥájí Mullá
Ṣáliḥ-i-Baraqání, whose members occupied an enviable position
in the Persian ecclesiastical hierarchy; the namesake of the
illustrious Fáṭimih; designated as Zarrín-Táj (Crown of Gold)
and Zakíyyih (Virtuous) by her family and kindred; born in the same
year as Bahá’u’lláh; regarded from childhood, by her
fellow-townsmen, as a prodigy, alike in her intelligence and beauty;
highly esteemed even by some of the most haughty and learned ‘ulamás
of her country, prior to her conversion, for the brilliancy and
novelty of the views she propounded; acclaimed as Qurrat-i-‘Ayní
(solace of my eyes) by her admiring teacher, Siyyid Káẓim;
entitled Ṭáhirih (the Pure One) by the “Tongue of Power and
Glory;” and the only woman enrolled by the Báb as one of the
Letters of the Living; she had, through a dream, referred to earlier
in these pages, established her first contact with a Faith which she
continued to propagate to her last breath, and in its hour of
greatest peril, with all the ardor of her unsubduable spirit.
Undeterred by the vehement protests of her father; contemptuous of
the anathemas of her uncle; unmoved by the earnest solicitations of
her husband and her brothers; undaunted by the measures which, first
in Karbilá and subsequently in Baghdád, and later in Qazvín,
the civil and ecclesiastical authorities had taken to curtail her
activities, with eager energy she urged the Bábí Cause. Through her
eloquent pleadings, her fearless denunciations, her dissertations,
poems and translations, her commentaries and correspondence, she
persisted in firing the imagination and in enlisting the allegiance
of Arabs and Persians alike to the new Revelation, in condemning the
perversity of her generation, and in advocating a revolutionary
transformation in the habits and manners of her people.
She it was who while in Karbilá — the foremost stronghold of Shí‘ah
Islám — had been moved to address lengthy epistles to each of the
‘ulamás residing in that city, who relegated women to a rank
little higher than animals and denied them even the possession of a
soul — epistles in which she ably vindicated her high purpose and
exposed their malignant designs. She it was who, in open defiance of
the customs of the fanatical inhabitants of that same city, boldly
disregarded the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Imám Ḥusayn,
commemorated with elaborate ceremony in the early days of Muḥarram,
and celebrated instead the anniversary of the birthday of the Báb,
which fell on the first day of that month. It was through her
prodigious eloquence and the astounding force of her argument that
she confounded the representative delegation of Shí‘ah, of
Sunní, of Christian and Jewish notables of Baghdád, who had
endeavored to dissuade her from her avowed purpose of spreading the
tidings of the new Message. She it was who, with consummate skill,
defended her faith and vindicated her conduct in the home and in the
presence of that eminent jurist, Shaykh Maḥmúd-i-Álúsí,
the Muftí of Baghdád, and who later held her historic
interviews with the princes, the ‘ulamás and the government
officials residing in Kirmánsháh, in the course of which the
Báb’s commentary on the Súrih of Kawthar was publicly read
and translated, and which culminated in the conversion of the Amír
(the governor) and his family. It was this remarkably gifted woman
who undertook the translation of the Báb’s lengthy commentary on
the Súrih of Joseph (the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’) for the benefit of
her Persian co-religionists, and exerted her utmost to spread the
knowledge and elucidate the contents of that mighty Book. It was her
fearlessness, her skill, her organizing ability and her unquenchable
enthusiasm which consolidated her newly won victories in no less
inimical a center than Qazvín, which prided itself on the fact that
no fewer than a hundred of the highest ecclesiastical leaders of
Islám dwelt within its gates. It was she who, in the house of
Bahá’u’lláh in Ṭihrán, in the course of her memorable
interview with the celebrated Vaḥíd, suddenly interrupted his
learned discourse on the signs of the new Manifestation, and
vehemently urged him, as she held ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, then a
child, on her lap, to arise and demonstrate through deeds of heroism
and self-sacrifice the depth and sincerity of his faith. It was to
her doors, during the height of her fame and popularity in Ṭihrán,
that the flower of feminine society in the capital flocked to hear
her brilliant discourses on the matchless tenets of her Faith. It was
the magic of her words which won the wedding guests away from the
festivities, on the occasion of the marriage of the son of Maḥmúd
Khán-i-Kalantar — in whose house she was confined — and
gathered them about her, eager to drink in her every word. It was her
passionate and unqualified affirmation of the claims and
distinguishing features of the new Revelation, in a series of seven
conferences with the deputies of the Grand Vizir commissioned to
interrogate her, which she held while confined in that same house,
which finally precipitated the sentence of her death. It was from her
pen that odes had flowed attesting, in unmistakable language, not
only her faith in the Revelation of the Báb, but also her
recognition of the exalted and as yet undisclosed mission of
Bahá’u’lláh. And last but not least it was owing to her
initiative, while participating in the Conference of Badasht,
that the most challenging implications of a revolutionary and as yet
but dimly grasped Dispensation were laid bare before her
fellow-disciples and the new Order permanently divorced from the laws
and institutions of Islám. Such marvelous achievements were now to
be crowned by, and attain their final consummation in, her martyrdom
in the midst of the storm that was raging throughout the capital.
One night, aware that the hour of her death was at hand, she put on
the attire of a bride, and annointed herself with perfume, and,
sending for the wife of the Kalantar, she communicated to her the
secret of her impending martyrdom, and confided to her her last
wishes. Then, closeting herself in her chambers, she awaited, in
prayer and meditation, the hour which was to witness her reunion with
her Beloved. She was pacing the floor of her room, chanting a litany
expressive of both grief and triumph, when the farráshes of
‘Azíz Khán-i-Sardár arrived, in the dead of night, to
conduct her to the Ílkhání garden, which lay beyond the
city gates, and which was to be the site of her martyrdom. When she
arrived the Sardár was in the midst of a drunken debauch with his
lieutenants, and was roaring with laughter; he ordered offhand that
she be strangled at once and thrown into a pit. With that same silken
kerchief which she had intuitively reserved for that purpose, and
delivered in her last moments to the son of Kalantar who accompanied
her, the death of this immortal heroine was accomplished. Her body
was lowered into a well, which was then filled with earth and stones,
in the manner she herself had desired.
Thus ended the life of this great Bábí heroine, the first woman
suffrage martyr, who, at her death, turning to the one in whose
custody she had been placed, had boldly declared: “You can kill me
as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.”
Her career was as dazzling as it was brief, as tragic as it was
eventful. Unlike her fellow-disciples, whose exploits remained, for
the most part unknown, and unsung by their contemporaries in foreign
lands, the fame of this immortal woman was noised abroad, and
traveling with remarkable swiftness as far as the capitals of Western
Europe, aroused the enthusiastic admiration and evoked the ardent
praise of men and women of divers nationalities, callings and
cultures. Little wonder that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá should have
joined her name to those of Sarah, of Ásíyih, of the Virgin Mary
and of Fáṭimih, who, in the course of successive Dispensations,
have towered, by reason of their intrinsic merits and unique
position, above the rank and file of their sex. “In eloquence,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself has written, “she was the
calamity of the age, and in ratiocination the trouble of the world.”
He, moreover, has described her as “a brand afire with the love
of God”
and “a lamp aglow with the bounty of God.”
Indeed the wondrous story of her life propagated itself as far and as
fast as that of the Báb Himself, the direct Source of her
inspiration. “Prodige de science, mais aussi prodige de beauté”
is the tribute paid her by a noted commentator on the life of the Báb
and His disciples. “The Persian Joan of Arc, the leader of
emancipation for women of the Orient … who bore resemblance both to
the mediaeval Heloise and the neo-platonic Hypatia,” thus was she
acclaimed by a noted playwright whom Sarah Bernhardt had specifically
requested to write a dramatized version of her life. “The heroism
of the lovely but ill-fated poetess of Qazvín, Zarrín-Táj (Crown
of Gold) …” testifies Lord Curzon of Kedleston, “is one of the
most affecting episodes in modern history.” “The appearance of
such a woman as Qurratu’l-‘Ayn,” wrote the well-known British
Orientalist, Prof. E. G. Browne, “is, in any country and any age, a
rare phenomenon, but in such a country as Persia it is a prodigy — nay,
almost a miracle.… Had the Bábí religion no other claim to
greatness, this were sufficient … that it produced a heroine like
Qurratu’l-‘Ayn.” “The harvest sown in Islamic lands by
Qurratu’l-‘Ayn,” significantly affirms the renowned English
divine, Dr. T. K. Cheyne, in one of his books, “is now beginning to
appear … this noble woman … has the credit of opening the
catalogue of social reforms in Persia…” “Assuredly one of the
most striking and interesting manifestations of this religion” is
the reference to her by the noted French diplomat and brilliant
writer, Comte de Gobineau. “In Qazvín,” he adds, “she was
held, with every justification, to be a prodigy.” “Many people,”
he, moreover has written, “who knew her and heard her at different
periods of her life have invariably told me … that when she spoke
one felt stirred to the depths of one’s soul, was filled with
admiration, and was moved to tears.” “No memory,” writes Sir
Valentine Chirol, “is more deeply venerated or kindles greater
enthusiasm than hers, and the influence which she wielded in her
lifetime still inures to her sex.” “O Ṭáhirih!” exclaims in
his book on the Bábís the great author and poet of Turkey, Sulaymán
Náẓim Bey, “you are worth a thousand Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháhs!”
“The greatest ideal of womanhood has been Ṭáhirih” is the
tribute paid her by the mother of one of the Presidents of Austria,
Mrs. Marianna Hainisch, “… I shall try to do for the women of
Austria what Ṭáhirih gave her life to do for the women of Persia.”
Many and divers are her ardent admirers who, throughout the five
continents, are eager to know more about her. Many are those whose
conduct has been ennobled by her inspiring example, who have
committed to memory her matchless odes, or set to music her poems,
before whose eyes glows the vision of her indomitable spirit, in
whose hearts is enshrined a love and admiration that time can never
dim, and in whose souls burns the determination to tread as
dauntlessly, and with that same fidelity, the path she chose for
herself, and from which she never swerved from the moment of her
conversion to the hour of her death.
Execution of prominent disciples of the Báb
The fierce gale of persecution that had swept Bahá’u’lláh into
a subterranean dungeon and snuffed out the light of Ṭáhirih also
sealed the fate of the Báb’s distinguished amanuensis, Siyyid
Ḥusayn-i-Yazdí, surnamed ‘Azíz, who had shared His confinement
in both Máh-Kú and Chihríq. A man of rich experience and
high merit, deeply versed in the teachings of his Master, and
enjoying His unqualified confidence, he, refusing every offer of
deliverance from the leading officials of Ṭihrán, yearned
unceasingly for the martyrdom which had been denied him on the day
the Báb had laid down His life in the barrack-square of Tabríz. A
fellow-prisoner of Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-Chál of
Ṭihrán, from Whom he derived inspiration and solace as he recalled
those precious days spent in the company of his Master in
Ádhirbáyján, he was finally struck down, in circumstances
of shameful cruelty, by that same ‘Azíz Khán-i-Sardár who
had dealt the fatal blow to Ṭáhirih.
Another victim of the frightful tortures inflicted by an unyielding
enemy was the high-minded, the influential and courageous Ḥájí
Sulaymán Khán. So greatly was he esteemed that the
Amír-Niẓám had felt, on a previous occasion, constrained to
ignore his connection with the Faith he had embraced and to spare his
life. The turmoil that convulsed Ṭihrán as a result of the attempt
on the life of the sovereign, however, precipitated his arrest and
brought about his martyrdom. The Sháh, having failed to
induce him through the Ḥájibu’d-Dawlih to recant, commanded that
he be put to death in any way he himself might choose. Nine holes, at
his express wish, were made in his flesh, in each of which a lighted
candle was placed. As the executioner shrank from performing this
gruesome task, he attempted to snatch the knife from his hand that he
might himself plunge it into his own body. Fearing lest he should
attack him the executioner refused, and bade his men tie the victim’s
hands behind his back, whereupon the intrepid sufferer pleaded with
them to pierce two holes in his breast, two in his shoulders, one in
the nape of his neck, and four others in his back — a wish they
complied with. Standing erect as an arrow, his eyes glowing with
stoic fortitude, unperturbed by the howling multitude or the sight of
his own blood streaming from his wounds, and preceded by minstrels
and drummers, he led the concourse that pressed round him to the
final place of his martyrdom. Every few steps he would interrupt his
march to address the bewildered bystanders in words in which he
glorified the Báb and magnified the significance of his own death.
As his eyes beheld the candles flickering in their bloody sockets, he
would burst forth in exclamations of unrestrained delight. Whenever
one of them fell from his body he would with his own hand pick it up,
light it from the others, and replace it. “Why dost thou not
dance?” asked the executioner mockingly, “since thou findest
death so pleasant?” “Dance?” cried the sufferer, “In one hand
the wine-cup, in one hand the tresses of the Friend. Such a dance in
the midst of the market-place is my desire!” He was still in the
bazaar when the flowing of a breeze, fanning the flames of the
candles now burning deep in his flesh, caused it to sizzle, whereupon
he burst forth addressing the flames that ate into his wounds: “You
have long lost your sting, O flames, and have been robbed of your
power to pain me. Make haste, for from your very tongues of fire I
can hear the voice that calls me to my Beloved.” In a blaze of
light he walked as a conqueror might have marched to the scene of his
victory. At the foot of the gallows he once again raised his voice in
a final appeal to the multitude of onlookers. He then prostrated
himself in the direction of the shrine of the Imám-Zádih Ḥasan,
murmuring some words in Arabic. “My work is now finished,” he
cried to the executioner, “come and do yours.” Life still
lingered in him as his body was sawn into two halves, with the praise
of his Beloved still fluttering from his dying lips. The scorched and
bloody remnants of his corpse were, as he himself had requested,
suspended on either side of the Gate of Naw, mute witnesses to the
unquenchable love which the Báb had kindled in the breasts of His
disciples.
The violent conflagration kindled as a result of the attempted
assassination of the sovereign could not be confined to the capital.
It overran the adjoining provinces, ravaged Mázindarán, the native
province of Bahá’u’lláh, and brought about in its wake, the
confiscation, the plunder and the destruction of all His possessions.
In the village of Tákur, in the district of Núr, His sumptuously
furnished home, inherited from His father, was, by order of Mírzá
Abú-Ṭálib Khán, nephew of the Grand Vizir, completely
despoiled, and whatever could not be carried away was ordered to be
destroyed, while its rooms, more stately than those of the palaces of
Ṭihrán, were disfigured beyond repair. Even the houses of the
people were leveled with the ground, after which the entire village
was set on fire.
The commotion that had seized Ṭihrán and had given rise to the
campaign of outrage and spoliation in Mázindarán spread even as far
as Yazd, Nayríz and Shíráz, rocking the remotest hamlets,
and rekindling the flames of persecution. Once again greedy governors
and perfidious subordinates vied with each other in despoiling the
innocent, in massacring the guiltless, and in dishonoring the noblest
of their race. A carnage ensued which repeated the atrocities already
perpetrated in Nayríz and Zanján. “My pen,” writes the
chronicler of the bloody episodes associated with the birth and rise
of our Faith, “shrinks in horror in attempting to describe what
befell those valiant men and women.… What I have attempted to
recount of the horrors of the siege of Zanján … pales before the
glaring ferocity of the atrocities perpetrated a few years later in
Nayríz and Shíráz.” The heads of no less than two hundred
victims of these outbursts of ferocious fanaticism were impaled on
bayonets, and carried triumphantly from Shíráz to Ábádih.
Forty women and children were charred to a cinder by being placed in
a cave, in which a vast quantity of firewood had been heaped up,
soaked with naphtha and set alight. Three hundred women were forced
to ride two by two on bare-backed horses all the way to Shíráz.
Stripped almost naked they were led between rows of heads hewn from
the lifeless bodies of their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers.
Untold insults were heaped upon them, and the hardships they suffered
were such that many among them perished.
Tributes paid to the heroism of the Bábís
Thus drew to a close a chapter which records for all time the
bloodiest, the most tragic, the most heroic period of the first
Bahá’í century. The torrents of blood that poured out during
those crowded and calamitous years may be regarded as constituting
the fertile seeds of that World Order a swiftly succeeding and
still greater Revelation was to proclaim and establish. The tributes
paid the noble army of the heroes, saints and martyrs of that
Primitive Age, by friend and foe alike, from Bahá’u’lláh
Himself down to the most disinterested observers in distant lands,
and from the moment of its birth until the present day, bear
imperishable witness to the glory of the deeds that immortalize that
Age.
“The whole world,”
is Bahá’u’lláh’s matchless
testimony in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “marveled at the manner of
their sacrifice.… The mind is bewildered at their deeds, and the
soul marveleth at their fortitude and bodily endurance.… Hath any
age witnessed such momentous happenings?”
And again: “Hath
the world, since the days of Adam, witnessed such tumult, such
violent commotion?… Methinks, patience was revealed only by virtue
of their fortitude, and faithfulness itself was begotten only by
their deeds.”
“Through the blood which they shed,”
He, in a prayer, referring more specifically to the martyrs of the
Faith, has significantly affirmed, “the earth hath been
impregnated with the wondrous revelations of Thy might and the
gem-like signs of Thy glorious sovereignty. Ere-long shall she tell
out her tidings, when the set time is come.”
To whom else could these significant words of Muḥammad, the Apostle
of God, quoted by Quddús while addressing his companions in the Fort
of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, apply if not to those heroes of
God who, with their life-blood, ushered in the Promised Day? “O
how I long to behold the countenance of My brethren, my brethren who
will appear at the end of the world! Blessed are We, blessed are
they; greater is their blessedness than ours.”
Who else could
be meant by this tradition, called Ḥadíth-i-Jábir,
recorded in the Káfí, and authenticated by Bahá’u’lláh in the
Kitáb-i-Íqán, which, in indubitable language, sets forth the signs
of the appearance of the promised Qá’im? “His saints shall be
abased in His time, and their heads shall be exchanged as presents,
even as the heads of the Turk and the Daylamite are exchanged as
presents; they shall be slain and burned, and shall be afraid,
fearful and dismayed; the earth shall be dyed with their blood, and
lamentation and wailing shall prevail amongst their women; these are
My saints indeed.”
“Tales of magnificent heroism,” is the written testimony of Lord
Curzon of Kedleston, “illumine the blood-stained pages of Bábí
history.… The fires of Smithfield did not kindle a nobler courage
than has met and defied the more refined torture-mongers of Ṭihrán.
Of no small account, then, must be the tenets of a creed that can
awaken in its followers so rare and beautiful a spirit of
self-sacrifice. The heroism and martyrdom of His (the Báb) followers
will appeal to many others who can find no similar phenomena in the
contemporaneous records of Islám.” “Bábism,” wrote Prof. J.
Darmesteter, “which diffused itself in less than five years from
one end of Persia to another, which was bathed in 1852 in the blood
of its martyrs, has been silently progressing and propagating itself.
If Persia is to be at all regenerate it will be through this new
Faith.” “Des milliers de martyrs,” attests Renan in his “Les
Apôtres,” “sont accourus pour lui (the Báb) avec allégresse au
devant de la mort. Un jour sans pareil peut-être dans l’histoire
du monde fut celui de la grande boucherie qui se fit des Bábís à
Teheran.” “One of those strange outbursts,” declares the
well-known Orientalist Prof. E. G. Browne, “of enthusiasm, faith,
fervent devotion and indomitable heroism … the birth of a Faith
which may not impossibly win a place amidst the great religions of
the world.” And again: “The spirit which pervades the Bábís is
such that it can hardly fail to affect most powerfully all subjected
to its influence.… Let those who have not seen disbelieve me if
they will, but, should that spirit once reveal itself to them, they
will experience an emotion which they are not likely to forget.”
“J’avoue même,”
is the assertion made by Comte de
Gobineau in his book, “que, si je voyais en Europe une secte d’une
nature analogue au Babysme se présenter avec des avantages tels que
les siens, foi aveugle, enthousiasme extrême, courage et dévouement
éprouvés, respect inspiré aux indifférents, terreur profonde
inspirée aux adversaires, et de plus, comme je l’ai dit, un
prosélytisme qui ne s’arrête pas, et donc les succès sont
constants dans toutes les classes de la société; si je voyais,
dis-je, tout cela exister en Europe, je n’hésiterais pas à
prédire que, dans un temps donné, la puissance et le sceptre
appartiendront de toute nécessité aux possesseurs de ces grands
avantages.”
“The truth of the matter,” is the answer which ‘Abbás-Qulí
Khán-i-Láríjání, whose bullet was responsible for the
death of Mullá Ḥusayn, is reported to have given to a query
addressed to him by Prince Aḥmad Mírzá in the presence of several
witnesses, “is that any one who had not seen Karbilá would, if he
had seen Ṭabarsí, not only have comprehended what there took place,
but would have ceased to consider it; and had he seen Mullá Ḥusayn
of Bushrúyih, he would have been convinced that the Chief of
Martyrs (Imám Ḥusayn) had returned to earth; and had he witnessed
my deeds, he would assuredly have said: ‘This is Shimr come
back with sword and lance…’ In truth, I know not what had been
shown to these people, or what they had seen, that they came forth to
battle with such alacrity and joy.… The imagination of man cannot
conceive the vehemence of their courage and valor.”
Fate of the persecutors of the Báb and His disciples
What, in conclusion, we may well ask ourselves, has been the fate of
that flagitious crew who, actuated by malice, by greed or fanaticism,
sought to quench the light which the Báb and His followers had
diffused over their country and its people? The rod of Divine
chastisement, swiftly and with unyielding severity, spared neither
the Chief Magistrate of the realm, nor his ministers and counselors,
nor the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the religion with which his
government was indissolubly connected, nor the governors who acted as
his representatives, nor the chiefs of his armed forces who, in
varying degrees, deliberately or through fear or neglect, contributed
to the appalling trials to which an infant Faith was so undeservedly
subjected. Muḥammad Sháh himself, a sovereign at once
bigoted and irresolute who, refusing to heed the appeal of the Báb
to receive Him in the capital and enable Him to demonstrate the truth
of His Cause, yielded to the importunities of a malevolent minister,
succumbed, at the early age of forty, after sustaining a sudden
reverse of fortune, to a complication of maladies, and was condemned
to that “hell-fire”
which, “on the Day of
Resurrection,”
the Author of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ had
sworn would inevitably devour him. His evil genius, the omnipotent
Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, the power behind the throne and the chief
instigator of the outrages perpetrated against the Báb, including
His imprisonment in the mountains of Ádhirbáyján, was,
after the lapse of scarcely a year and six months from the time he
interposed himself between the Sháh and his Captive, hurled
from power, deprived of his ill-gotten riches, was disgraced by his
sovereign, was driven to seek shelter from the rising wrath of his
countrymen in the shrine of Sháh ‘Abdu’l-‘Aẓím, and
was later ignominiously expelled to Karbilá, falling a prey to
disease, poverty and gnawing sorrow — a piteous vindication of that
denunciatory Tablet in which his Prisoner had foreshadowed his doom
and denounced his infamy. As to the low-born and infamous Amír-Niẓám,
Mírzá Taqí Khán, the first year of whose short-lived
ministry was stained with the ferocious onslaught against the
defenders of the Fort of Ṭabarsí, who authorized and encouraged
the execution of the Seven Martyrs of Ṭihrán, who unleashed the
assault against Vaḥíd and his companions, who was directly
responsible for the death-sentence of the Báb, and who precipitated
the great upheaval of Zanján, he forfeited, through the unrelenting
jealousy of his sovereign and the vindictiveness of court intrigue,
all the honors he had enjoyed, and was treacherously put to death by
the royal order, his veins being opened in the bath of the Palace of
Fín, near Káshán. “Had the Amír-Niẓám,”
Bahá’u’lláh is reported by Nabíl to have stated, “been
aware of My true position, he would certainly have laid hold on Me.
He exerted the utmost effort to discover the real situation, but was
unsuccessful. God wished him to be ignorant of it.”
Mírzá Áqá
Khán, who had taken such an active part in the unbridled
cruelties perpetrated as a result of the attempt on the life of the
sovereign, was driven from office, and placed under strict
surveillance in Yazd, where he ended his days in shame and despair.
Ḥusayn Khán, the governor of Shíráz, stigmatized
as a “wine-bibber” and a “tyrant,” the first who arose to
ill-treat the Báb, who publicly rebuked Him and bade his attendant
strike Him violently in the face, was compelled not only to endure
the dreadful calamity that so suddenly befell him, his family, his
city and his province, but afterwards to witness the undoing of all
his labors, and to lead in obscurity the remaining days of his life,
till he tottered to his grave abandoned alike by his friends and his
enemies. Ḥájibu’d-Dawlih, that bloodthirsty fiend, who had
strenuously hounded down so many innocent and defenseless Bábís,
fell in his turn a victim to the fury of the turbulent Lurs, who,
after despoiling him of his property, cut off his beard, and forced
him to eat it, saddled and bridled him, and rode him before the eyes
of the people, after which they inflicted under his very eyes
shameful atrocities upon his womenfolk and children. The
Sa‘ídu’l-‘Ulamá, the fanatical, the ferocious and shameless
mujtahid of Bárfurúsh, whose unquenchable hostility had
heaped such insults upon, and caused such sufferings to, the heroes
of Ṭabarsí, fell, soon after the abominations he had perpetrated,
a prey to a strange disease, provoking an unquenchable thirst and
producing such icy chills that neither the furs he wrapped himself
in, nor the fire that continually burned in his room could alleviate
his sufferings. The spectacle of his ruined and once luxurious home,
fallen into such ill use after his death as to become the refuse-heap
of the people of his town, impressed so profoundly the inhabitants of
Mázindarán that in their mutual vituperations they would often
invoke upon each other’s home the same fate as that which had
befallen that accursed habitation. The false-hearted and ambitious
Maḥmúd Khán-i-Kalantar, into whose custody Ṭáhirih had
been delivered before her martyrdom, incurred, nine years later, the
wrath of his royal master, was dragged feet first by ropes through
the bazaars to a place outside the city gates, and there hung on the
gallows. Mírzá Ḥasan Khán, who carried out the execution
of the Báb under orders from his brother, the Amír-Niẓám, was,
within two years of that unpardonable act, subjected to a dreadful
punishment which ended in his death. The Shaykhu’l-Islám
of Tabríz, the insolent, the avaricious and tyrannical Mírzá ‘Alí
Aṣghar, who, after the refusal of the bodyguard of the
governor of that city to inflict the bastinado on the Báb, proceeded
to apply eleven times the rods to the feet of his Prisoner with his
own hand, was, in that same year, struck with paralysis, and, after
enduring the most excruciating ordeal, died a miserable death — a
death that was soon followed by the abolition of the function of the
Shaykhu’l-Islám in that city. The haughty and
perfidious Mírzá Abú-Ṭálib Khán who, disregarding the
counsels of moderation given him by Mírzá Áqá Khán, the
Grand Vizir, ordered the plunder and burning of the village of Tákur,
as well as the destruction of the house of Bahá’u’lláh, was, a
year later, stricken with plague and perished wretchedly, shunned by
even his nearest kindred. Mihr-‘Alí Khán, the
Shujá‘u’l-Mulk, who, after the attempt on the Sháh’s
life, so savagely persecuted the remnants of the Bábí community in
Nayríz, fell ill, according to the testimony of his own grandson,
and was stricken with dumbness, which was never relieved till the day
of his death. His accomplice, Mírzá Na‘ím, fell into disgrace,
was twice heavily fined, dismissed from office, and subjected to
exquisite tortures. The regiment which, scorning the miracle that
warned Sám Khán and his men to dissociate themselves from
any further attempt to destroy the life of the Báb, volunteered to
take their place and riddled His body with its bullets, lost, in that
same year, no less than two hundred and fifty of its officers and
men, in a terrible earthquake between Ardibíl and Tabríz; two years
later the remaining five hundred were mercilessly shot in Tabríz for
mutiny, and the people, gazing on their exposed and mutilated bodies,
recalled their savage act, and indulged in such expressions of
condemnation and wonder as to induce the leading mujtahids to
chastise and silence them. The head of that regiment, Áqá Ján Big,
lost his life, six years after the Báb’s martyrdom, during the
bombardment of Muḥammarih by the British naval forces.
The judgment of God, so rigorous and unsparing in its visitations on
those who took a leading or an active part in the crimes committed
against the Báb and His followers, was not less severe in its
dealings with the mass of the people — a people more fanatical than
the Jews in the days of Jesus — a people notorious for their gross
ignorance, their ferocious bigotry, their willful perversity and
savage cruelty, a people mercenary, avaricious, egotistical and
cowardly. I can do no better than quote what the Báb Himself has
written in the Dalá’il-i-Sab‘ih (Seven Proofs) during the last
days of His ministry: “Call thou to remembrance the early days
of the Revelation. How great the number of those who died of cholera!
That was indeed one of the prodigies of the Revelation, and yet none
recognized it! During four years the scourge raged among Shí‘ah
Muslims without any one grasping its significance!”
“As to
the great mass of its people (Persia),” Nabíl has recorded in his
immortal narrative, “who watched with sullen indifference the
tragedy that was being enacted before their eyes, and who failed to
raise a finger in protest against the hideousness of those cruelties,
they fell, in their turn, victims to a misery which all the resources
of the land and the energy of its statesmen were powerless to
alleviate.… From the very day the hand of the assailant was
stretched forth against the Báb … visitation upon visitation
crushed the spirit out of that ungrateful people, and brought them to
the very brink of national bankruptcy. Plagues, the very names of
which were almost unknown to them except for a cursory reference in
the dust-covered books which few cared to read, fell upon them with a
fury that none could escape. That scourge scattered devastation
wherever it spread. Prince and peasant alike felt its sting and bowed
to its yoke. It held the populace in its grip, and refused to relax
its hold upon them. As malignant as the fever which decimated the
province of Gílán, these sudden afflictions continued to lay waste
the land. Grievous as were these calamities, the avenging wrath of
God did not stop at the misfortunes that befell a perverse and
faithless people. It made itself felt in every living being that
breathed on the surface of that stricken land. It afflicted the life
of plants and animals alike, and made the people feel the magnitude
of their distress. Famine added its horrors to the stupendous weight
of afflictions under which the people were groaning. The gaunt
spectre of starvation stalked abroad amidst them, and the prospect of
a slow and painful death haunted their vision.… People and
government alike sighed for the relief which they could nowhere
obtain. They drank the cup of woe to its dregs, utterly unregardful
of the Hand which had brought it to their lips, and of the Person for
Whose sake they were made to suffer.”
The train of dire events that followed in swift succession the
calamitous attempt on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh
mark, as already observed, the termination of the Bábí Dispensation
and the closing of the initial, the darkest and bloodiest chapter of
the history of the first Bahá’í century. A phase of measureless
tribulation had been ushered in by these events, in the course of
which the fortunes of the Faith proclaimed by the Báb sank to their
lowest ebb. Indeed ever since its inception trials and vexations,
setbacks and disappointments, denunciations, betrayals and massacres
had, in a steadily rising crescendo, contributed to the decimation of
the ranks of its followers, strained to the utmost the loyalty of its
stoutest upholders, and all but succeeded in disrupting the
foundations on which it rested.
From its birth, government, clergy and people had risen as one man
against it and vowed eternal enmity to its cause. Muḥammad Sháh,
weak alike in mind and will, had, under pressure, rejected the
overtures made to him by the Báb Himself, had declined to meet Him
face to face, and even refused Him admittance to the capital. The
youthful Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, of a cruel and imperious
nature, had, both as crown prince and as reigning sovereign,
increasingly evinced the bitter hostility which, at a later stage in
his reign, was to blaze forth in all its dark and ruthless savagery.
The powerful and sagacious Mu‘tamid, the one solitary figure who
could have extended Him the support and protection He so sorely
needed, was taken from Him by a sudden death. The Sherif of Mecca,
who through the mediation of Quddús had been made acquainted with
the new Revelation on the occasion of the Báb’s pilgrimage to
Mecca, had turned a deaf ear to the Divine Message, and received His
messenger with curt indifference. The prearranged gathering that was
to have taken place in the holy city of Karbilá, in the course of
the Báb’s return journey from Ḥijáz, had, to the disappointment
of His followers who had been eagerly awaiting His arrival, to be
definitely abandoned. The eighteen Letters of the Living, the
principal bastions that buttressed the infant strength of the Faith,
had for the most part fallen. The “Mirrors,” the “Guides,”
the “Witnesses” comprising the Bábí hierarchy had either been
put to the sword, or hounded from their native soil, or bludgeoned
into silence. The program, whose essentials had been communicated to
the foremost among them, had, owing to their excessive zeal, remained
for the most part unfulfilled. The attempts which two of those
disciples had made to establish the Faith in Turkey and India had
signally failed at the very outset of their mission. The tempests
that had swept Mázindarán, Nayríz and Zanján had, in addition to
blasting to their roots the promising careers of the venerated
Quddús, the lion-hearted Mullá Ḥusayn, the erudite Vaḥíd, and
the indomitable Ḥujjat, cut short the lives of an alarmingly large
number of the most resourceful and most valiant of their
fellow-disciples. The hideous outrages associated with the death of
the Seven Martyrs of Ṭihrán had been responsible for the
extinction of yet another living symbol of the Faith, who, by reason
of his close kinship to, and intimate association with, the Báb, no
less than by virtue of his inherent qualities, would if spared have
decisively contributed to the protection and furtherance of a
struggling Cause.
The storm which subsequently burst, with unexampled violence, on a
community already beaten to its knees, had, moreover, robbed it of
its greatest heroine, the incomparable Ṭáhirih, still in the full
tide of her victories, had sealed the doom of Siyyid Ḥusayn, the
Báb’s trusted amanuensis and chosen repository of His last wishes,
had laid low Mullá ‘Abdu’l-Karím-i-Qazvíní, admittedly one of
the very few who could claim to possess a profound knowledge of the
origins of the Faith, and had plunged into a dungeon Bahá’u’lláh,
the sole survivor among the towering figures of the new Dispensation.
The Báb — the Fountainhead from whence the vitalizing energies of a
newborn Revelation had flowed — had Himself, ere the outburst of that
hurricane, succumbed, in harrowing circumstances, to the volleys of a
firing squad leaving behind, as titular head of a well-nigh disrupted
community, a mere figurehead, timid in the extreme, good-natured yet
susceptible to the slightest influence, devoid of any outstanding
qualities, who now (loosed from the controlling hand of Bahá’u’lláh,
the real Leader) was seeking, in the guise of a dervish, the
protection afforded by the hills of his native Mázindarán against
the threatened assaults of a deadly enemy. The voluminous writings of
the Founder of the Faith — in manuscript, dispersed, unclassified,
poorly transcribed and ill-preserved, were in part, owing to the
fever and tumult of the times, either deliberately destroyed,
confiscated, or hurriedly dispatched to places of safety beyond the
confines of the land in which they were revealed. Powerful
adversaries, among whom towered the figure of the inordinately
ambitious and hypocritical Ḥájí Mírzá Karím Khán, who
at the special request of the Sháh had in a treatise
viciously attacked the new Faith and its doctrines, had now raised
their heads, and, emboldened by the reverses it had sustained, were
heaping abuse and calumnies upon it. Furthermore, under the stress of
intolerable circumstances, a few of the Bábís were constrained to
recant their faith, while others went so far as to apostatize and
join the ranks of the enemy. And now to the sum of these dire
misfortunes a monstrous calumny, arising from the outrage perpetrated
by a handful of irresponsible enthusiasts, was added, branding a holy
and innocent Faith with an infamy that seemed indelible, and which
threatened to loosen it from its foundations.
And yet the Fire which the Hand of Omnipotence had lighted, though
smothered by this torrent of tribulations let loose upon it, was not
quenched. The flame which for nine years had burned with such
brilliant intensity was indeed momentarily extinguished, but the
embers which that great conflagration had left behind still glowed,
destined, at no distant date, to blaze forth once again, through the
reviving breezes of an incomparably greater Revelation, and to shed
an illumination that would not only dissipate the surrounding
darkness but project its radiance as far as the extremities of both
the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Just as the enforced captivity
and isolation of the Báb had, on the one hand, afforded Him the
opportunity of formulating His doctrine, of unfolding the full
implications of His Revelation, of formally and publicly declaring
His station and of establishing His Covenant, and, on the other hand,
had been instrumental in the proclamation of the laws of His
Dispensation through the voice of His disciples assembled in Badasht,
so did the crisis of unprecedented magnitude, culminating in the
execution of the Báb and the imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh,
prove to be the prelude of a revival which, through the quickening
power of a far mightier Revelation, was to immortalize the fame, and
fix on a still more enduring foundation, far beyond the confines of
His native land, the original Message of the Prophet of Shíráz.
At a time when the Cause of the Báb seemed to be hovering on the
brink of extinction, when the hopes and ambitions which animated it
had, to all human seeming, been frustrated, when the colossal
sacrifices of its unnumbered lovers appeared to have been made in
vain, the Divine Promise enshrined within it was about to be suddenly
redeemed, and its final perfection mysteriously manifested. The Bábí
Dispensation was being brought to its close (not prematurely but in
its own appointed time), and was yielding its destined fruit and
revealing its ultimate purpose — the birth of the Mission of
Bahá’u’lláh. In this most dark and dreadful hour a New Light
was about to break in glory on Persia’s somber horizon. As a result
of what was in fact an evolving, ripening process, the most momentous
if not the most spectacular stage in the Heroic Age of the Faith was
now about to open.
During nine years, as foretold by the Báb Himself, swiftly,
mysteriously and irresistibly the embryonic Faith conceived by Him
had been developing until, at the fixed hour, the burden of the
promised Cause of God was cast amidst the gloom and agony of the
Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán. “Behold,”
Bahá’u’lláh
Himself, years later, testified, in refutation of the claims of those
who had rejected the validity of His mission following so closely
upon that of the Báb, “how immediately upon the completion of
the ninth year of this wondrous, this most holy and merciful
Dispensation, the requisite number of pure, of wholly consecrated and
sanctified souls has been most secretly consummated.”
“That
so brief an interval,”
He, moreover has asserted, “should
have separated this most mighty and wondrous Revelation from Mine own
previous Manifestation is a secret that no man can unravel, and a
mystery such as no mind can fathom. Its duration had been
foreordained.”
St. John the Divine had himself, with reference to these two
successive Revelations, clearly prophesied: “The second woe is
past; and, behold the third woe cometh quickly.” “This third
woe,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, commenting upon this verse, has
explained, “is the day of the Manifestation of Bahá’u’lláh,
the Day of God, and it is near to the day of the appearance of the
Báb.”
“All the peoples of the world,”
He moreover
has asserted, “are awaiting two Manifestations, Who must be
contemporaneous; all wait for the fulfillment of this promise.”
And again: “The essential fact is that all are promised two
Manifestations, Who will come one following on the other.”
Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í, that luminous star of
Divine guidance who had so clearly perceived, before the year sixty,
the approaching glory of Bahá’u’lláh, and laid stress upon “the
twin Revelations which are to follow each other in rapid succession,”
had, on his part, made this significant statement regarding the
approaching hour of that supreme Revelation, in an epistle addressed
in his own hand to Siyyid Káẓim: “The mystery of this Cause must
needs be made manifest, and the secret of this Message must needs be
divulged. I can say no more. I can appoint no time. His Cause will be
made known after Ḥín (68).”
The circumstances in which the Vehicle of this newborn Revelation,
following with such swiftness that of the Báb, received the first
intimations of His sublime mission recall, and indeed surpass in
poignancy the soul-shaking experience of Moses when confronted by the
Burning Bush in the wilderness of Sinai; of Zoroaster when awakened
to His mission by a succession of seven visions; of Jesus when coming
out of the waters of the Jordan He saw the heavens opened and the
Holy Ghost descend like a dove and light upon Him; of Muḥammad when
in the Cave of Ḥirá’, outside of the holy city of Mecca, the voice of
Gabriel bade Him “cry in the name of Thy Lord”
; and of the
Báb when in a dream He approached the bleeding head of the Imám
Ḥusayn, and, quaffing the blood that dripped from his lacerated
throat, awoke to find Himself the chosen recipient of the outpouring
grace of the Almighty.
Significance of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh
What, we may well inquire at this juncture, were the nature and
implications of that Revelation which, manifesting itself so soon
after the Declaration of the Báb, abolished, at one stroke, the
Dispensation which that Faith had so newly proclaimed, and upheld,
with such vehemence and force, the Divine authority of its Author?
What, we may well pause to consider, were the claims of Him Who,
Himself a disciple of the Báb, had, at such an early stage, regarded
Himself as empowered to abrogate the Law identified with His beloved
Master? What, we may further reflect, could be the relationship
between the religious Systems established before Him and His own
Revelation — a Revelation which, flowing out, in that extremely
perilous hour, from His travailing soul, pierced the gloom that had
settled upon that pestilential pit, and, bursting through its walls,
and propagating itself as far as the ends of the earth, infused into
the entire body of mankind its boundless potentialities, and is now
under our very eyes, shaping the course of human society?
He Who in such dramatic circumstances was made to sustain the
overpowering weight of so glorious a Mission was none other than the
One Whom posterity will acclaim, and Whom innumerable followers
already recognize, as the Judge, the Lawgiver and Redeemer of all
mankind, as the Organizer of the entire planet, as the Unifier of the
children of men, as the Inaugurator of the long-awaited millennium,
as the Originator of a new “Universal Cycle,” as the Establisher
of the Most Great Peace, as the Fountain of the Most Great Justice,
as the Proclaimer of the coming of age of the entire human race, as
the Creator of a new World Order, and as the Inspirer and Founder of
a world civilization.
To Israel He was neither more nor less than the incarnation of the
“Everlasting Father”; the “Lord of Hosts” come down “with
ten thousands of saints”; to Christendom Christ returned “in the
glory of the Father,” to Shí‘ah Islám the return of the
Imám Ḥusayn; to Sunní Islám the descent of the “Spirit of God”
(Jesus Christ); to the Zoroastrians the promised Sháh-Bahrám;
to the Hindus the reincarnation of Krishna; to the Buddhists the
fifth Buddha.
In the name He bore He combined those of the Imám Ḥusayn, the most
illustrious of the successors of the Apostle of God — the brightest
“star” shining in the “crown” mentioned in the Revelation of
St. John — and of the Imám ‘Alí, the Commander of the Faithful,
the second of the two “witnesses” extolled in that same Book. He
was formally designated Bahá’u’lláh, an appellation
specifically recorded in the Persian Bayán, signifying at once the
glory, the light and the splendor of God, and was styled the “Lord
of Lords,” the “Most Great Name,” the “Ancient Beauty,” the
“Pen of the Most High,” the “Hidden Name,” the “Preserved
Treasure,” “He Whom God will make manifest,” the “Most Great
Light,” the “All-Highest Horizon,” the “Most Great Ocean,”
the “Supreme Heaven,” the “Pre-Existent Root,” the
“Self-Subsistent,” the “Day-Star of the Universe,” the “Great
Announcement,” the “Speaker on Sinai,” the “Sifter of Men,”
the “Wronged One of the World,” the “Desire of the Nations,”
the “Lord of the Covenant,” the “Tree beyond which there is no
passing.” He derived His descent, on the one hand, from Abraham
(the Father of the Faithful) through his wife Katurah, and on the
other from Zoroaster, as well as from Yazdigird, the last king of the
Sásáníyán dynasty. He was moreover a descendant of Jesse, and
belonged, through His father, Mírzá ‘Abbás, better known as
Mírzá Buzurg — a nobleman closely associated with the ministerial
circles of the Court of Fatḥ-‘Alí Sháh — to one of the
most ancient and renowned families of Mázindarán.
To Him Isaiah, the greatest of the Jewish prophets, had alluded as
the “Glory of the Lord,”
the “Everlasting Father,”
the “Prince of Peace,”
the “Wonderful,”
the
“Counsellor,”
the “Rod come forth out of the stem of
Jesse”
and the “Branch grown out of His roots,”
Who
“shall be established upon the throne of David,”
Who “will
come with strong hand,”
Who “shall judge among the
nations,”
Who “shall smite the earth with the rod of His
mouth, and with the breath of His lips slay the wicked,”
and
Who “shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together
the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”
Of
Him David had sung in his Psalms, acclaiming Him as the “Lord of
Hosts”
and the “King of Glory.”
To Him Haggai had
referred as the “Desire of all nations,”
and Zachariah as
the “Branch”
Who “shall grow up out of His place,”
and “shall build the Temple of the Lord.”
Zachariah had
extolled Him as the “Lord”
Who “shall be king over
all the earth,”
while to His day Joel and Zephaniah had both
referred as the “day of Jehovah,”
the latter describing it
as “a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of
wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of
clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the
fenced cities, and against the high towers.”
His Day Ezekiel
and Daniel had, moreover, both acclaimed as the “day of the
Lord,”
and Malachi described as “the great and dreadful
day of the Lord”
when “the Sun of Righteousness”
will “arise, with healing in His wings,”
whilst Daniel had
pronounced His advent as signalizing the end of the “abomination
that maketh desolate.”
To His Dispensation the sacred books of the followers of Zoroaster
had referred as that in which the sun must needs be brought to a
standstill for no less than one whole month. To Him Zoroaster must
have alluded when, according to tradition, He foretold that a period
of three thousand years of conflict and contention must needs precede
the advent of the World-Savior Sháh-Bahrám, Who would
triumph over Ahriman and usher in an era of blessedness and peace.
He alone is meant by the prophecy attributed to Gautama Buddha
Himself, that “a Buddha named Maitreye, the Buddha of universal
fellowship”
should, in the fullness of time, arise and reveal
“His boundless glory.”
To Him the Bhagavad-Gita of the
Hindus had referred as the “Most Great Spirit,”
the “Tenth
Avatar,”
the “Immaculate Manifestation of Krishna.”
To Him Jesus Christ had referred as the “Prince of this world,”
as the “Comforter”
Who will “reprove the world of
sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment,”
as the “Spirit
of Truth”
Who “will guide you into all truth,”
Who
“shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that
shall He speak,”
as the “Lord of the Vineyard,”
and
as the “Son of Man”
Who “shall come in the glory of
His Father”
“in the clouds of heaven with power and great
glory,”
with “all the holy angels”
about Him, and
“all nations”
gathered before His throne. To Him the
Author of the Apocalypse had alluded as the “Glory of God,”
as “Alpha and Omega,”
“the Beginning and the End,”
“the First and the Last.”
Identifying His Revelation with
the “third woe,”
he, moreover, had extolled His Law as “a
new heaven and a new earth,”
as the “Tabernacle of God,”
as the “Holy City,”
as the “New Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband.”
To His Day Jesus Christ Himself had referred as “the
regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His
glory.”
To the hour of His advent St. Paul had alluded as the
hour of the “last trump,” the “trump of God,” whilst St.
Peter had spoken of it as the “Day of God, wherein the heavens
being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat.” His Day he, furthermore, had described as “the
times of refreshing,” “the times of restitution of all things,
which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy Prophets since the
world began.”
To Him Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, had alluded in His Book as the
“Great Announcement,”
and declared His Day to be the Day
whereon “God”
will “come down”
“overshadowed
with clouds,”
the Day whereon “thy Lord shall come and the
angels rank on rank,”
and “The Spirit shall arise and the
angels shall be ranged in order.”
His advent He, in that Book,
in a súrih said to have been termed by Him “the heart of the
Qur’án,”
had foreshadowed as that of the “third”
Messenger, sent down to “strengthen”
the two who preceded
Him. To His Day He, in the pages of that same Book, had paid a
glowing tribute, glorifying it as the “Great Day,”
the
“Last Day,”
the “Day of God,”
the “Day of
Judgment,”
the “Day of Reckoning,”
the “Day of
Mutual Deceit,”
the “Day of Severing,”
the “Day
of Sighing,”
the “Day of Meeting,”
the Day “when
the Decree shall be accomplished,”
the Day whereon the second
“Trumpet blast”
will be sounded, the “Day when
mankind shall stand before the Lord of the world,”
and “all
shall come to Him in humble guise,”
the Day when “thou
shalt see the mountains, which thou thinkest so firm, pass away with
the passing of a cloud,”
the Day “wherein account shall be
taken,”
“the approaching Day, when men’s hearts shall
rise up, choking them, into their throats,”
the Day when “all
that are in the heavens and all that are on the earth shall be
terror-stricken, save him whom God pleaseth to deliver,”
the
Day whereon “every suckling woman shall forsake her sucking
babe, and every woman that hath a burden in her womb shall cast her
burden,”
the Day “when the earth shall shine with the
light of her Lord, and the Book shall be set, and the Prophets shall
be brought up, and the witnesses; and judgment shall be given between
them with equity; and none shall be wronged.”
The plenitude of His glory the Apostle of God had, moreover, as
attested by Bahá’u’lláh Himself, compared to the “full
moon on its fourteenth night.”
His station the Imám ‘Alí,
the Commander of the Faithful, had, according to the same testimony,
identified with “Him Who conversed with Moses from the Burning
Bush on Sinai.”
To the transcendent character of His mission
the Imám Ḥusayn had, again according to Bahá’u’lláh, borne
witness as a “Revelation whose Revealer will be He Who revealed”
the Apostle of God Himself.
About Him Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í, the herald of
the Bábí Dispensation, who had foreshadowed the “strange
happenings” that would transpire “between the years sixty and
sixty-seven,” and had categorically affirmed the inevitability of
His Revelation had, as previously mentioned, written the following:
“The Mystery of this Cause must needs be made manifest, and the
Secret of this Message must needs be divulged. I can say no more, I
can appoint no time. His Cause will be made known after Ḥín (68)”
(i.e., after a while).
Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí, Shaykh Aḥmad’s
disciple and successor, had likewise written: “The Qá’im must
needs be put to death. After He has been slain the world will have
attained the age of eighteen.” In his Sharḥ-i-Qaṣídiy-i-Lámíyyih
he had even alluded to the name “Bahá.” Furthermore, to his
disciples, as his days drew to a close, he had significantly
declared: “Verily, I say, after the Qá’im the Qayyúm will be
made manifest. For when the star of the former has set the sun of the
beauty of Ḥusayn will rise and illuminate the whole world. Then
will be unfolded in all its glory the ‘Mystery’ and the ‘Secret’
spoken of by Shaykh Aḥmad.… To have attained unto
that Day of Days is to have attained unto the crowning glory of past
generations, and one goodly deed performed in that age is equal to
the pious worship of countless centuries.”
The Báb had no less significantly extolled Him as the “Essence
of Being,”
as the “Remnant of God,”
as the
“Omnipotent Master,”
as the “Crimson,
all-encompassing Light,”
as “Lord of the visible and
invisible,”
as the “sole Object of all previous
Revelations, including The Revelation of the Qá’im Himself.”
He had formally designated Him as “He Whom God shall make
manifest,”
had alluded to Him as the “Abhá Horizon”
wherein He Himself lived and dwelt, had specifically recorded His
title, and eulogized His “Order”
in His best-known work,
the Persian Bayán, had disclosed His name through His allusion to
the “Son of ‘Alí, a true and undoubted Leader of men,”
had, repeatedly, orally and in writing, fixed, beyond the shadow of a
doubt, the time of His Revelation, and warned His followers lest “the
Bayán and all that hath been revealed therein”
should “shut
them out as by a veil”
from Him. He had, moreover, declared
that He was the “first servant to believe in Him,”
that He
bore Him allegiance “before all things were created,”
that
“no allusion”
of His “could allude unto Him,”
that “the year-old germ that holdeth within itself the
potentialities of the Revelation that is to come is endowed with a
potency superior to the combined forces of the whole of the Bayán.”
He had, moreover, clearly asserted that He had “covenanted with
all created things”
concerning Him Whom God shall make manifest
ere the covenant concerning His own mission had been established. He
had readily acknowledged that He was but “a letter”
of
that “Most Mighty Book,”
“a dew-drop”
from that
“Limitless Ocean,”
that His Revelation was “only a
leaf amongst the leaves of His Paradise,”
that “all that
hath been exalted in the Bayán”
was but “a ring”
upon His own hand, and He Himself “a ring upon the hand of Him
Whom God shall make manifest,”
Who, “turneth it as He
pleaseth, for whatsoever He pleaseth, and through whatsoever He
pleaseth.”
He had unmistakably declared that He had
“sacrificed”
Himself “wholly”
for Him, that He
had “consented to be cursed”
for His sake, and to have
“yearned for naught but martyrdom”
in the path of His
love. Finally, He had unequivocally prophesied: “Today the Bayán
is in the stage of seed; at the beginning of the manifestation of Him
Whom God shall make manifest its ultimate perfection will become
apparent.”
“Ere nine will have elapsed from the inception
of this Cause the realities of the created things will not be made
manifest. All that thou hast as yet seen is but the stage from the
moist-germ until We clothed it with flesh. Be patient until thou
beholdest a new creation. Say: Blessed, therefore, be God, the Most
Excellent of Makers!”
“He around Whom the Point of the Bayán (Báb) hath revolved is
come”
is Bahá’u’lláh’s confirmatory testimony to the
inconceivable greatness and preeminent character of His own
Revelation. “If all who are in heaven and on earth,”
He
moreover affirms, “be invested in this day with the powers and
attributes destined for the Letters of the Bayán, whose station is
ten thousand times more glorious than that of the Letters of the
Qur’ánic Dispensation, and if they one and all should, swift as
the twinkling of an eye, hesitate to recognize My Revelation, they
shall be accounted, in the sight of God, of those that have gone
astray, and regarded as ‘Letters of Negation.’”
“Powerful
is He, the King of Divine might,”
He, alluding to Himself in
the Kitáb-i-Íqán, asserts, “to extinguish with one letter of
His wondrous words, the breath of life in the whole of the Bayán and
the people thereof, and with one letter bestow upon them a new and
everlasting life, and cause them to arise and speed out of the
sepulchers of their vain and selfish desires.”
“This,”
He furthermore declares, “is the king of days,”
the “Day
of God Himself,”
the “Day which shall never be followed by
night,”
the “Springtime which autumn will never overtake,”
“the eye to past ages and centuries,”
for which “the
soul of every Prophet of God, of every Divine Messenger, hath
thirsted,”
for which “all the divers kindreds of the earth
have yearned,”
through which “God hath proved the hearts
of the entire company of His Messengers and Prophets, and beyond them
those that stand guard over His sacred and inviolable Sanctuary, the
inmates of the Celestial Pavilion and dwellers of the Tabernacle of
Glory.”
“In this most mighty Revelation,”
He
moreover, states, “all the Dispensations of the past have
attained their highest, their final consummation.”
And again:
“None among the Manifestations of old, except to a prescribed
degree, hath ever completely apprehended the nature of this
Revelation.”
Referring to His own station He declares: “But
for Him no Divine Messenger would have been invested with the Robe of
Prophethood, nor would any of the sacred Scriptures have been
revealed.”
And last but not least is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s own tribute to
the transcendent character of the Revelation identified with His
Father: “Centuries, nay ages, must pass away, ere the Day-Star
of Truth shineth again in its mid-summer splendor, or appeareth once
more in the radiance of its vernal glory.”
“The mere
contemplation of the Dispensation inaugurated by the Blessed Beauty,”
He furthermore affirms, “would have sufficed to overwhelm the
saints of bygone ages — saints who longed to partake for one moment
of its great glory.”
“Concerning the Manifestations that
will come down in the future ‘in the shadows of the clouds,’ know
verily,”
is His significant statement, “that in so far as
their relation to the source of their inspiration is concerned they
are under the shadow of the Ancient Beauty. In their relation,
however, to the age in which they appear, each and every one of them
‘doeth whatsoever He willeth.’”
And finally stands this,
His illuminating explanation, setting forth conclusively the true
relationship between the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh and that of
the Báb: “The Revelation of the Báb may be likened to the sun,
its station corresponding to the first sign of the Zodiac — the sign
Aries — which the sun enters at the vernal equinox. The station of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation, on the other hand, is represented
by the sign Leo, the sun’s mid-summer and highest station. By this
is meant that this holy Dispensation is illumined with the light of
the Sun of Truth shining from its most exalted station, and in the
plenitude of its resplendency, its heat and glory.”
To attempt an exhaustive survey of the prophetic references to
Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation would indeed be an impossible task.
To this the pen of Bahá’u’lláh Himself bears witness: “All
the Divine Books and Scriptures have predicted and announced unto men
the advent of the Most Great Revelation. None can adequately recount
the verses recorded in the Books of former ages which forecast this
supreme Bounty, this most mighty Bestowal.”
In conclusion of this theme, I feel, it should be stated that the
Revelation identified with Bahá’u’lláh abrogates
unconditionally all the Dispensations gone before it, upholds
uncompromisingly the eternal verities they enshrine, recognizes
firmly and absolutely the Divine origin of their Authors, preserves
inviolate the sanctity of their authentic Scriptures, disclaims any
intention of lowering the status of their Founders or of abating the
spiritual ideals they inculcate, clarifies and correlates their
functions, reaffirms their common, their unchangeable and fundamental
purpose, reconciles their seemingly divergent claims and doctrines,
readily and gratefully recognizes their respective contributions to
the gradual unfoldment of one Divine Revelation, unhesitatingly
acknowledges itself to be but one link in the chain of continually
progressive Revelations, supplements their teachings with such laws
and ordinances as conform to the imperative needs, and are dictated
by the growing receptivity, of a fast evolving and constantly
changing society, and proclaims its readiness and ability to fuse and
incorporate the contending sects and factions into which they have
fallen into a universal Fellowship, functioning within the framework,
and in accordance with the precepts, of a divinely conceived, a
world-unifying, a world-redeeming Order.
Circumstances attending its birth
A Revelation, hailed as the promise and crowning glory of past ages
and centuries, as the consummation of all the Dispensations within
the Adamic Cycle, inaugurating an era of at least a thousand years’
duration, and a cycle destined to last no less than five thousand
centuries, signalizing the end of the Prophetic Era and the beginning
of the Era of Fulfillment, unsurpassed alike in the duration of its
Author’s ministry and the fecundity and splendor of His
mission — such a Revelation was, as already noted, born amidst the
darkness of a subterranean dungeon in Ṭihrán — an abominable pit
that had once served as a reservoir of water for one of the public
baths of the city. Wrapped in its stygian gloom, breathing its fetid
air, numbed by its humid and icy atmosphere, His feet in stocks, His
neck weighed down by a mighty chain, surrounded by criminals and
miscreants of the worst order, oppressed by the consciousness of the
terrible blot that had stained the fair name of His beloved Faith,
painfully aware of the dire distress that had overtaken its
champions, and of the grave dangers that faced the remnant of its
followers — at so critical an hour and under such appalling
circumstances the “Most Great Spirit,”
as designated by
Himself, and symbolized in the Zoroastrian, the Mosaic, the
Christian, and Muḥammadan Dispensations by the Sacred Fire, the
Burning Bush, the Dove and the Angel Gabriel respectively, descended
upon, and revealed itself, personated by a “Maiden,”
to
the agonized soul of Bahá’u’lláh.
“One night in a dream,”
He Himself, calling to mind, in
the evening of His life, the first stirrings of God’s Revelation
within His soul, has written, “these exalted words were heard on
every side: ‘Verily, We shall render Thee victorious by Thyself and
by Thy pen. Grieve Thou not for that which hath befallen Thee,
neither be Thou afraid, for Thou art in safety. Ere long will God
raise up the treasures of the earth — men who will aid Thee through
Thyself and through Thy Name, wherewith God hath revived the hearts
of such as have recognized Him.’”
In another passage He
describes, briefly and graphically, the impact of the onrushing force
of the Divine Summons upon His entire being — an experience vividly
recalling the vision of God that caused Moses to fall in a swoon, and
the voice of Gabriel which plunged Muḥammad into such consternation
that, hurrying to the shelter of His home, He bade His wife,
Khadíjih, envelop Him in His mantle. “During the days I
lay in the prison of Ṭihrán,”
are His own memorable words,
“though the galling weight of the chains and the stench-filled
air allowed Me but little sleep, still in those infrequent moments of
slumber I felt as if something flowed from the crown of My head over
My breast, even as a mighty torrent that precipitateth itself upon
the earth from the summit of a lofty mountain. Every limb of My body
would, as a result, be set afire. At such moments My tongue recited
what no man could bear to hear.”
In His Súratu’l-Haykal (the Súrih of the Temple) He thus
describes those breathless moments when the Maiden, symbolizing the
“Most Great Spirit”
proclaimed His mission to the entire
creation: “While engulfed in tribulations I heard a most
wondrous, a most sweet voice, calling above My head. Turning My face,
I beheld a Maiden — the embodiment of the remembrance of the name of
My Lord — suspended in the air before Me. So rejoiced was she in her
very soul that her countenance shone with the ornament of the
good-pleasure of God, and her cheeks glowed with the brightness of
the All-Merciful. Betwixt earth and heaven she was raising a call
which captivated the hearts and minds of men. She was imparting to
both My inward and outer being tidings which rejoiced My soul, and
the souls of God’s honored servants. Pointing with her finger unto
My head, she addressed all who are in heaven and all who are on
earth, saying: ‘By God! This is the Best-Beloved of the worlds, and
yet ye comprehend not. This is the Beauty of God amongst you, and the
power of His sovereignty within you, could ye but understand. This is
the Mystery of God and His Treasure, the Cause of God and His glory
unto all who are in the kingdoms of Revelation and of creation, if ye
be of them that perceive.’”
In His Epistle to Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, His royal
adversary, revealed at the height of the proclamation of His Message,
occur these passages which shed further light on the Divine origin of
His mission: “O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon
My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over
Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is
not from Me, but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing. And he
bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven, and for this there
befell Me what hath caused the tears of every man of understanding to
flow.… This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of Thy Lord,
the Almighty, the All-Praised, have stirred.… His all-compelling
summons hath reached Me, and caused Me to speak His praise amidst all
people. I was indeed as one dead when His behest was uttered. The
hand of the will of Thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Merciful,
transformed Me.”
“By My Life!”
He asserts in another
Tablet, “Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself, but
God, of His own choosing, hath manifested Me.”
And again:
“Whenever I chose to hold My peace and be still, lo, the Voice
of the Holy Spirit, standing on My right hand, aroused Me, and the
Most Great Spirit appeared before My face, and Gabriel overshadowed
Me, and the Spirit of Glory stirred within My bosom, bidding Me arise
and break My silence.”
Such were the circumstances in which the Sun of Truth arose in the
city of Ṭihrán — a city which, by reason of so rare a privilege
conferred upon it, had been glorified by the Báb as the “Holy
Land,”
and surnamed by Bahá’u’lláh “the Mother of
the world,”
the “Day-spring of Light,”
the
“Dawning-Place of the signs of the Lord,”
the “Source
of the joy of all mankind.”
The first dawnings of that Light of
peerless splendor had, as already described, broken in the city of
Shíráz. The rim of that Orb had now appeared above the
horizon of the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán. Its rays were to
burst forth, a decade later, in Baghdád, piercing the clouds
which immediately after its rise in those somber surroundings
obscured its splendor. It was destined to mount to its zenith in the
far-away city of Adrianople, and ultimately to set in the immediate
vicinity of the fortress-town of ‘Akká.
The process whereby the effulgence of so dazzling a Revelation was
unfolded to the eyes of men was of necessity slow and gradual. The
first intimation which its Bearer received did not synchronize with,
nor was it followed immediately by, a disclosure of its character to
either His own companions or His kindred. A period of no less than
ten years had to elapse ere its far-reaching implications could be
directly divulged to even those who had been intimately associated
with Him — a period of great spiritual ferment, during which the
Recipient of so weighty a Message restlessly anticipated the hour at
which He could unburden His heavily laden soul, so replete with the
potent energies released by God’s nascent Revelation. All He did,
in the course of this pre-ordained interval, was to hint, in veiled
and allegorical language, in epistles, commentaries, prayers and
treatises, which He was moved to reveal, that the Báb’s promise
had already been fulfilled, and that He Himself was the One Who had
been chosen to redeem it. A few of His fellow-disciples,
distinguished by their sagacity, and their personal attachment and
devotion to Him, perceived the radiance of the as yet unrevealed
glory that had flooded His soul, and would have, but for His
restraining influence, divulged His secret and proclaimed it far and
wide.
The attempt on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, as stated
in a previous chapter, was made on the 28th of the month of Shavvál,
1268 A.H., corresponding to the 15th of August, 1852. Immediately
after, Bahá’u’lláh was arrested in Níyávarán, was conducted
with the greatest ignominy to Ṭihrán and cast into the Síyáh-Chál.
His imprisonment lasted for a period of no less than four months, in
the middle of which the “year nine” (1269), anticipated in such
glowing terms by the Báb, and alluded to as the year “after Ḥín”
by Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í, was ushered in,
endowing with undreamt-of potentialities the whole world. Two months
after that year was born, Bahá’u’lláh, the purpose of His
imprisonment now accomplished, was released from His confinement, and
set out, a month later, for Baghdád, on the first stage of a
memorable and life-long exile which was to carry Him, in the course
of years, as far as Adrianople in European Turkey, and which was to
end with His twenty-four years’ incarceration in ‘Akká.
Now that He had been invested, in consequence of that potent dream,
with the power and sovereign authority associated with His Divine
mission, His deliverance from a confinement that had achieved its
purpose, and which if prolonged would have completely fettered Him in
the exercise of His newly-bestowed functions, became not only
inevitable, but imperative and urgent. Nor were the means and
instruments lacking whereby his emancipation from the shackles that
restrained Him could be effected. The persistent and decisive
intervention of the Russian Minister, Prince Dolgorouki, who left no
stone unturned to establish the innocence of Bahá’u’lláh; the
public confession of Mullá Shaykh ‘Alíy-i-Turshízí,
surnamed ‘Aẓím, who, in the Síyáh-Chál, in the
presence of the Ḥájibu’d-Dawlih and the Russian Minister’s
interpreter and of the government’s representative, emphatically
exonerated Him, and acknowledged his own complicity; the indisputable
testimony established by competent tribunals; the unrelaxing efforts
exerted by His own brothers, sisters and kindred, — all these
combined to effect His ultimate deliverance from the hands of His
rapacious enemies. Another potent if less evident influence which
must be acknowledged as having had a share in His liberation was the
fate suffered by so large a number of His self-sacrificing
fellow-disciples who languished with Him in that same prison. For, as
Nabíl truly remarks, “the blood, shed in the course of that
fateful year in Ṭihrán by that heroic band with whom Bahá’u’lláh
had been imprisoned, was the ransom paid for His deliverance from the
hand of a foe that sought to prevent Him from achieving the purpose
for which God had destined Him.”
His release from the Síyáh-Chál and departure for Baghdád
With such overwhelming testimonies establishing beyond the shadow of
a doubt the non-complicity of Bahá’u’lláh, the Grand Vizir,
after having secured the reluctant consent of his sovereign to set
free his Captive, was now in a position to dispatch his trusted
representative, Ḥájí ‘Alí, to the Síyáh-Chál,
instructing him to deliver to Bahá’u’lláh the order for His
release. The sight which that emissary beheld upon his arrival evoked
in him such anger that he cursed his master for the shameful
treatment of a man of such high position and stainless renown.
Removing his mantle from his shoulders he presented it to
Bahá’u’lláh, entreating Him to wear it when in the presence of
the Minister and his counsellors, a request which He emphatically
refused, preferring to appear, attired in the garb of a prisoner,
before the members of the Imperial government.
No sooner had He presented Himself before them than the Grand Vizir
addressed Him saying: “Had you chosen to take my advice, and had
you dissociated yourself from the Faith of the Siyyid-i-Báb, you
would never have suffered the pains and indignities that have been
heaped upon you.” “Had you, in your turn,”
Bahá’u’lláh
retorted, “followed My counsels, the affairs of the government
would not have reached so critical a stage.”
Mírzá Áqá Khán
was thereupon reminded of the conversation he had had with Him on the
occasion of the Báb’s martyrdom, when he had been warned that “the
flame that has been kindled will blaze forth more fiercely than
ever.”
“What is it that you advise me now to do?”
he
inquired from Bahá’u’lláh. “Command the governors of the
realm,”
was the instant reply, “to cease shedding the
blood of the innocent, to cease plundering their property, to cease
dishonoring their women, and injuring their children.”
That
same day the Grand Vizir acted on the advice thus given him; but any
effect it had, as the course of subsequent events amply demonstrated,
proved to be momentary and negligible.
The relative peace and tranquillity accorded Bahá’u’lláh after
His tragic and cruel imprisonment was destined, by the dictates of an
unerring Wisdom, to be of an extremely short duration. He had hardly
rejoined His family and kindred when a decree from Náṣiri’d-Dín
Sháh was communicated to Him, bidding Him leave the territory
of Persia, fixing a time-limit of one month for His departure and
allowing Him the right to choose the land of His exile.
The Russian Minister, as soon as he was informed of the Imperial
decision, expressed the desire to take Bahá’u’lláh under the
protection of his government, and offered to extend every facility
for His removal to Russia. This invitation, so spontaneously
extended, Bahá’u’lláh declined, preferring, in pursuance of an
unerring instinct, to establish His abode in Turkish territory, in
the city of Baghdád. “Whilst I lay chained and fettered
in the prison,”
He Himself, years after, testified in His
Epistle addressed to the Czar of Russia, Nicolaevitch Alexander II,
“one of thy ministers extended Me his aid. Whereupon God hath
ordained for thee a station which the knowledge of none can
comprehend except His knowledge. Beware lest thou barter away this
sublime station.”
“In the days,”
is yet another
illuminating testimony revealed by His pen, “when this Wronged
One was sore-afflicted in prison, the minister of the highly esteemed
government (of Russia) — may God, glorified and exalted be He,
assist him! — exerted his utmost endeavor to compass My deliverance.
Several times permission for My release was granted. Some of the
‘ulamás of the city, however, would prevent it. Finally, My
freedom was gained through the solicitude and the endeavor of His
Excellency the Minister.… His Imperial Majesty, the Most Great
Emperor — may God, exalted and glorified be He, assist him! — extended
to Me for the sake of God his protection — a protection which has
excited the envy and enmity of the foolish ones of the earth.”
Significance of His banishment
The Sháh’s edict, equivalent to an order for the immediate
expulsion of Bahá’u’lláh from Persian territory, opens a new
and glorious chapter in the history of the first Bahá’í century.
Viewed in its proper perspective it will be even recognized to have
ushered in one of the most eventful and momentous epochs in the
world’s religious history. It coincides with the inauguration of a
ministry extending over a period of almost forty years — a ministry
which, by virtue of its creative power, its cleansing force, its
healing influences, and the irresistible operation of the
world-directing, world-shaping forces it released, stands
unparalleled in the religious annals of the entire human race. It
marks the opening phase in a series of banishments, ranging over a
period of four decades, and terminating only with the death of Him
Who was the Object of that cruel edict. The process which it set in
motion, gradually progressing and unfolding, began by establishing
His Cause for a time in the very midst of the jealously-guarded
stronghold of Shí‘ah Islám, and brought Him in personal
contact with its highest and most illustrious exponents; then, at a
later stage, it confronted Him, at the seat of the Caliphate, with
the civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries of the realm and the
representatives of the Sulṭán of Turkey, the most powerful potentate
in the Islamic world; and finally carried Him as far as the shores of
the Holy Land, thereby fulfilling the prophecies recorded in both the
Old and the New Testaments, redeeming the pledge enshrined in various
traditions attributed to the Apostle of God and the Imáms who
succeeded Him, and ushering in the long-awaited restoration of Israel
to the ancient cradle of its Faith. With it, may be said to have
begun the last and most fruitful of the four stages of a life, the
first twenty-seven years of which were characterized by the care-free
enjoyment of all the advantages conferred by high birth and riches,
and by an unfailing solicitude for the interests of the poor, the
sick and the down-trodden; followed by nine years of active and
exemplary discipleship in the service of the Báb; and finally by an
imprisonment of four months’ duration, overshadowed throughout by
mortal peril, embittered by agonizing sorrows, and immortalized, as
it drew to a close, by the sudden eruption of the forces released by
an overpowering, soul-revolutionizing Revelation.
This enforced and hurried departure of Bahá’u’lláh from His
native land, accompanied by some of His relatives, recalls in some of
its aspects, the precipitate flight of the Holy Family into Egypt;
the sudden migration of Muḥammad, soon after His assumption of the
prophetic office, from Mecca to Medina; the exodus of Moses, His
brother and His followers from the land of their birth, in response
to the Divine summons, and above all the banishment of Abraham from
Ur of the Chaldees to the Promised Land — a banishment which, in the
multitudinous benefits it conferred upon so many divers peoples,
faiths and nations, constitutes the nearest historical approach to
the incalculable blessings destined to be vouchsafed, in this day,
and in future ages, to the whole human race, in direct consequence of
the exile suffered by Him Whose Cause is the flower and fruit of all
previous Revelations.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, after enumerating in His “Some Answered
Questions” the far-reaching consequences of Abraham’s banishment,
significantly affirms that “since the exile of Abraham from Ur
to Aleppo in Syria produced this result, we must consider what will
be the effect of the exile of Bahá’u’lláh in His several
removes from Ṭihrán to Baghdád, from thence to
Constantinople, to Rumelia and to the Holy Land.”
On the first day of the month of Rabí‘u’th-Thání,
of the year 1269 A.H., (January 12, 1853), nine months after His
return from Karbilá, Bahá’u’lláh, together with some of the
members of His family, and escorted by an officer of the Imperial
body-guard and an official representing the Russian Legation, set out
on His three months’ journey to Baghdád. Among those who
shared His exile was His wife, the saintly Navváb, entitled by Him
the “Most Exalted Leaf,” who, during almost forty years,
continued to evince a fortitude, a piety, a devotion and a nobility
of soul which earned her from the pen of her Lord the posthumous and
unrivalled tribute of having been made His “perpetual consort in
all the worlds of God.”
His nine-year-old son, later surnamed
the “Most Great Branch,” destined to become the Center of His
Covenant and authorized Interpreter of His teachings, together with
His seven-year-old sister, known in later years by the same title as
that of her illustrious mother, and whose services until the ripe old
age of four score years and six, no less than her exalted parentage,
entitle her to the distinction of ranking as the outstanding heroine
of the Bahá’í Dispensation, were also included among the exiles
who were now bidding their last farewell to their native country. Of
the two brothers who accompanied Him on that journey the first was
Mírzá Músá, commonly called Áqáy-i-Kalím, His staunch and
valued supporter, the ablest and most distinguished among His
brothers and sisters, and one of the “only two persons who,”
according to Bahá’u’lláh’s testimony, “were adequately
informed of the origins”
of His Faith. The other was Mírzá
Muḥammad-Qulí, a half-brother, who, in spite of the defection of
some of his relatives, remained to the end loyal to the Cause he had
espoused.
The journey, undertaken in the depth of an exceptionally severe
winter, carrying the little band of exiles, so inadequately equipped,
across the snow-bound mountains of Western Persia, though long and
perilous, was uneventful except for the warm and enthusiastic
reception accorded the travelers during their brief stay in Karand by
its governor Hayát-Qulí Khán, of the ‘Alíyu’lláhí
sect. He was shown, in return, such kindness by Bahá’u’lláh
that the people of the entire village were affected, and continued,
long after, to extend such hospitality to His followers on their way
to Baghdád that they gained the reputation of being known as
Bábís.
In a prayer revealed by Him at that time, Bahá’u’lláh,
expatiating upon the woes and trials He had endured in the
Síyáh-Chál, thus bears witness to the hardships undergone
in the course of that “terrible journey”
: “My God, My
Master, My Desire!… Thou hast created this atom of dust through the
consummate power of Thy might, and nurtured Him with Thine hands
which none can chain up.… Thou hast destined for Him trials and
tribulations which no tongue can describe, nor any of Thy Tablets
adequately recount. The throat Thou didst accustom to the touch of
silk Thou hast, in the end, clasped with strong chains, and the body
Thou didst ease with brocades and velvets Thou hast at last subjected
to the abasement of a dungeon. Thy decree hath shackled Me with
unnumbered fetters, and cast about My neck chains that none can
sunder. A number of years have passed during which afflictions have,
like showers of mercy, rained upon Me.… How many the nights during
which the weight of chains and fetters allowed Me no rest, and how
numerous the days during which peace and tranquillity were denied Me,
by reason of that wherewith the hands and tongues of men have
afflicted Me! Both bread and water which Thou hast, through Thy
all-embracing mercy, allowed unto the beasts of the field, they have,
for a time, forbidden unto this servant, and the things they refused
to inflict upon such as have seceded from Thy Cause, the same have
they suffered to be inflicted upon Me, until, finally, Thy decree was
irrevocably fixed, and Thy behest summoned this servant to depart out
of Persia, accompanied by a number of frail-bodied men and children
of tender age, at this time when the cold is so intense that one
cannot even speak, and ice and snow so abundant that it is impossible
to move.”
His residence in Baghdád prior to His withdrawal to Kurdistán
Finally, on the 28th of Jamádíyu’th-Thání 1269
A.H. (April 8, 1853), Bahá’u’lláh arrived in Baghdád,
the capital city of what was then the Turkish province of ‘Iráq.
From there He proceeded, a few days after, to Káẓimayn, about
three miles north of the city, a town inhabited chiefly by Persians,
and where the two Káẓims, the seventh and the ninth Imáms, are
buried. Soon after His arrival the representative of the Sháh’s
government, stationed in Baghdád, called on Him, and
suggested that it would be advisable for Him, in view of the many
visitors crowding that center of pilgrimage, to establish His
residence in Old Baghdád, a suggestion with which He readily
concurred. A month later, towards the end of Rajab, He rented the
house of Ḥájí ‘Alí Madad, in an old quarter of the city, into
which He moved with His family.
In that city, described in Islamic traditions as “Ẓahru’l-Kúfih,”
designated for centuries as the “Abode of Peace,” and
immortalized by Bahá’u’lláh as the “City of God,”
He, except for His two year retirement to the mountains of Kurdistán
and His occasional visits to Najaf, Karbilá and Káẓimayn,
continued to reside until His banishment to Constantinople. To that
city the Qur’án had alluded as the “Abode of Peace”
to
which God Himself “calleth.”
To it, in that same Book,
further allusion had been made in the verse “For them is a
Dwelling of Peace with their Lord … on the Day whereon God shall
gather them all together.”
From it radiated, wave after wave, a
power, a radiance and a glory which insensibly reanimated a
languishing Faith, sorely-stricken, sinking into obscurity,
threatened with oblivion. From it were diffused, day and night, and
with ever-increasing energy, the first emanations of a Revelation
which, in its scope, its copiousness, its driving force and the
volume and variety of its literature, was destined to excel that of
the Báb Himself. Above its horizon burst forth the rays of the Sun
of Truth, Whose rising glory had for ten long years been overshadowed
by the inky clouds of a consuming hatred, an ineradicable jealousy,
an unrelenting malice. In it the Tabernacle of the promised “Lord
of Hosts”
was first erected, and the foundations of the
long-awaited Kingdom of the “Father”
unassailably
established. Out of it went forth the earliest tidings of the Message
of Salvation which, as prophesied by Daniel, was to mark, after the
lapse of “a thousand two hundred and ninety days”
(1280
A.H.), the end of “the abomination that maketh desolate.”
Within its walls the “Most Great House of God,”
His
“Footstool”
and the “Throne of His Glory,”
“the
Cynosure of an adoring world,”
the “Lamp of Salvation
between earth and heaven,”
the “Sign of His remembrance to
all who are in heaven and on earth,”
enshrining the “Jewel
whose glory hath irradiated all creation,”
the “Standard”
of His Kingdom, the “Shrine round which will circle the
concourse of the faithful”
was irrevocably founded and
permanently consecrated. Upon it, by virtue of its sanctity as
Bahá’u’lláh’s “Most Holy Habitation”
and “Seat
of His transcendent glory,”
was conferred the honor of being
regarded as a center of pilgrimage second to none except the city of
‘Akká, His “Most Great Prison,”
in whose immediate
vicinity His holy Sepulcher, the Qiblih of the Bahá’í world, is
enshrined. Around the heavenly Table, spread in its very heart,
clergy and laity, Sunnís and Shí‘ahs, Kurds, Arabs, and
Persians, princes and nobles, peasants and dervishes, gathered in
increasing numbers from far and near, all partaking, according to
their needs and capacities, of a measure of that Divine sustenance
which was to enable them, in the course of time, to noise abroad the
fame of that bountiful Giver, swell the ranks of His admirers,
scatter far and wide His writings, enlarge the limits of His
congregation, and lay a firm foundation for the future erection of
the institutions of His Faith. And finally, before the gaze of the
diversified communities that dwelt within its gates, the first phase
in the gradual unfoldment of a newborn Revelation was ushered in, the
first effusions from the inspired pen of its Author were recorded,
the first principles of His slowly crystallizing doctrine were
formulated, the first implications of His august station were
apprehended, the first attacks aiming at the disruption of His Faith
from within were launched, the first victories over its internal
enemies were registered, and the first pilgrimages to the Door of His
Presence were undertaken.
This life-long exile to which the Bearer of so precious a Message was
now providentially condemned did not, and indeed could not, manifest,
either suddenly or rapidly, the potentialities latent within it. The
process whereby its unsuspected benefits were to be manifested to the
eyes of men was slow, painfully slow, and was characterized, as
indeed the history of His Faith from its inception to the present day
demonstrates, by a number of crises which at times threatened to
arrest its unfoldment and blast all the hopes which its progress had
engendered.
One such crisis which, as it deepened, threatened to jeopardize His
newborn Faith and to subvert its earliest foundations, overshadowed
the first years of His sojourn in ‘Iráq, the initial stage in His
life-long exile, and imparted to them a special significance. Unlike
those which preceded it, this crisis was purely internal in
character, and was occasioned solely by the acts, the ambitions and
follies of those who were numbered among His recognized
fellow-disciples.
The external enemies of the Faith, whether civil or ecclesiastical,
who had thus far been chiefly responsible for the reverses and
humiliations it had suffered, were by now relatively quiescent. The
public appetite for revenge, which had seemed insatiable, had now, to
some extent, in consequence of the torrents of blood that had flowed,
abated. A feeling, bordering on exhaustion and despair, had,
moreover, settled on some of its most inveterate enemies, who were
astute enough to perceive that though the Faith had bent beneath the
grievous blows their hands had dealt it, its structure had remained
essentially unimpaired and its spirit unbroken. The orders issued to
the governors of the provinces by the Grand Vizir had had,
furthermore, a sobering effect on the local authorities, who were now
dissuaded from venting their fury upon, and from indulging in their
sadistic cruelties against, a hated adversary.
A lull had, in consequence, momentarily ensued, which was destined to
be broken, at a later stage, by a further wave of repressive measures
in which the Sulṭán of Turkey and his ministers, as well as the
Sunní sacerdotal order, were to join hands with the Sháh and
the Shí‘ah clericals of Persia and ‘Iráq in an endeavor
to stamp out, once and for all, the Faith and all it stood for. While
this lull persisted the initial manifestations of the internal
crisis, already mentioned, were beginning to reveal themselves — a
crisis which, though less spectacular in the public eye, proved
itself, as it moved to its climax, to be one of unprecedented
gravity, reducing the numerical strength of the infant community,
imperiling its unity, causing immense damage to its prestige, and
tarnishing for a considerable period of time its glory.
This crisis had already been brewing in the days immediately
following the execution of the Báb, was intensified during the
months when the controlling hand of Bahá’u’lláh was suddenly
withdrawn as a result of His confinement in the Síyáh-Chál
of Ṭihrán, was further aggravated by His precipitate banishment
from Persia, and began to protrude its disturbing features during the
first years of His sojourn in Baghdád. Its devastating force
gathered momentum during His two year retirement to the mountains of
Kurdistán, and though it was checked, for a time, after His return
from Sulaymáníyyih, under the overmastering influences exerted
preparatory to the Declaration of His Mission, it broke out later,
with still greater violence, and reached its climax in Adrianople,
only to receive finally its death-blow under the impact of the
irresistible forces released through the proclamation of that Mission
to all mankind.
Its central figure was no less a person than the nominee of the Báb
Himself, the credulous and cowardly Mírzá Yaḥyá, to certain
traits of whose character reference has already been made in the
foregoing pages. The black-hearted scoundrel who befooled and
manipulated this vain and flaccid man with consummate skill and
unyielding persistence was a certain Siyyid Muḥammad, a native of
Iṣfahán, notorious for his inordinate ambition, his blind
obstinacy and uncontrollable jealousy. To him Bahá’u’lláh had
later referred in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas as the one who had “led
astray”
Mírzá Yaḥyá, and stigmatized him, in one of His
Tablets, as the “source of envy and the quintessence of
mischief,”
while ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had described the
relationship existing between these two as that of “the sucking
child”
to the “much-prized breast”
of its mother.
Forced to abandon his studies in the madrisiy-i-Ṣadr of Iṣfahán,
this Siyyid had migrated, in shame and remorse, to Karbilá, had
there joined the ranks of the Báb’s followers, and shown, after
His martyrdom, signs of vacillation which exposed the shallowness of
his faith and the fundamental weakness of his convictions.
Bahá’u’lláh’s first visit to Karbilá and the marks of
undisguised reverence, love and admiration shown Him by some of the
most distinguished among the former disciples and companions of
Siyyid Káẓim, had aroused in this calculating and unscrupulous
schemer an envy, and bred in his soul an animosity, which the
forbearance and patience shown him by Bahá’u’lláh had served
only to inflame. His deluded helpers, willing tools of his diabolical
designs, were the not inconsiderable number of Bábís who, baffled,
disillusioned and leaderless, were already predisposed to be beguiled
by him into pursuing a path diametrically opposed to the tenets and
counsels of a departed Leader.
For, with the Báb no longer in the midst of His followers; with His
nominee, either seeking a safe hiding place in the mountains of
Mázindarán, or wearing the disguise of a dervish or of an Arab
wandering from town to town; with Bahá’u’lláh imprisoned and
subsequently banished beyond the limits of His native country; with
the flower of the Faith mown down in a seemingly unending series of
slaughters, the remnants of that persecuted community were sunk in a
distress that appalled and paralyzed them, that stifled their spirit,
confused their minds and strained to the utmost their loyalty.
Reduced to this extremity they could no longer rely on any voice that
commanded sufficient authority to still their forebodings, resolve
their problems, or prescribe to them their duties and obligations.
Nabíl, traveling at that time through the province of Khurásán,
the scene of the tumultuous early victories of a rising Faith, had
himself summed up his impressions of the prevailing condition. “The
fire of the Cause of God,” he testifies in his narrative, “had
been well-nigh quenched in every place. I could detect no trace of
warmth anywhere.” In Qazvín, according to the same testimony, the
remnant of the community had split into four factions, bitterly
opposed to one another, and a prey to the most absurd doctrines and
fancies. Bahá’u’lláh upon His arrival in Baghdád, a city which
had witnessed the glowing evidences of the indefatigable zeal of
Ṭáhirih, found among His countrymen residing in that city no more
than a single Bábí, while in Káẓimayn inhabited chiefly by
Persians, a mere handful of His compatriots remained who still
professed, in fear and obscurity, their faith in the Báb.
The morals of the members of this dwindling community, no less than
their numbers, had sharply declined. Such was their “waywardness
and folly,”
to quote Bahá’u’lláh’s own words, that upon
His release from prison, His first decision was “to arise …
and undertake, with the utmost vigor, the task of regenerating this
people.”
As the character of the professed adherents of the Báb declined and
as proofs of the deepening confusion that afflicted them multiplied,
the mischief-makers, who were lying in wait, and whose sole aim was
to exploit the progressive deterioration in the situation for their
own benefit, grew ever more and more audacious. The conduct of Mírzá
Yaḥyá, who claimed to be the successor of the Báb, and who prided
himself on his high sounding titles of Mir’átu’l-Azalíyyih
(Everlasting Mirror), of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal (Morning of Eternity), and
of Ismu’l-Azal (Name of Eternity), and particularly the
machinations of Siyyid Muḥammad, exalted by him to the rank of the
first among the “Witnesses”
of the Bayán, were by now
assuming such a character that the prestige of the Faith was becoming
directly involved, and its future security seriously imperiled.
The former had, after the execution of the Báb, sustained such a
violent shock that his faith almost forsook him. Wandering for a
time, in the guise of a dervish, in the mountains of Mázindarán,
he, by his behavior, had so severely tested the loyalty of his
fellow-believers in Núr, most of whom had been converted through the
indefatigable zeal of Bahá’u’lláh, that they too wavered in
their convictions, some of them going so far as to throw in their lot
with the enemy. He subsequently proceeded to Rasht, and
remained concealed in the province of Gílán until his departure for
Kirmánsháh, where in order the better to screen himself he
entered the service of a certain ‘Abdu’lláh-i-Qazvíní, a maker
of shrouds, and became a vendor of his goods. He was still there when
Bahá’u’lláh passed through that city on His way to Baghdád,
and expressing a desire to live in close proximity to Bahá’u’lláh
but in a house by himself where he could ply some trade incognito, he
succeeded in obtaining from Him a sum of money with which he
purchased several bales of cotton and then proceeded, in the garb of
an Arab, by way of Mandalíj to Baghdád. He established
himself there in the street of the Charcoal Dealers, situated in a
dilapidated quarter of the city, and placing a turban upon his head,
and assuming the name of Ḥájí ‘Alíy-i-Lás-Furúsh,
embarked on his newly-chosen occupation. Siyyid Muḥammad had
meanwhile settled in Karbilá, and was busily engaged, with Mírzá
Yaḥyá as his lever, in kindling dissensions and in deranging the
life of the exiles and of the community that had gathered about them.
Little wonder that from the pen of Bahá’u’lláh, Who was as yet
unable to divulge the Secret that stirred within His bosom, these
words of warning, of counsel and of assurance should, at a time when
the shadows were beginning to deepen around Him, have proceeded: “The
days of tests are now come. Oceans of dissension and tribulation are
surging, and the Banners of Doubt are, in every nook and corner,
occupied in stirring up mischief and in leading men to perdition.…
Suffer not the voice of some of the soldiers of negation to cast
doubt into your midst, neither allow yourselves to become heedless of
Him Who is the Truth, inasmuch as in every Dispensation such
contentions have been raised. God, however, will establish His Faith,
and manifest His light albeit the stirrers of sedition abhor it.…
Watch ye every day for the Cause of God.… All are held captive in
His grasp. No place is there for any one to flee to. Think not the
Cause of God to be a thing lightly taken, in which any one can
gratify his whims. In various quarters a number of souls have, at the
present time, advanced this same claim. The time is approaching when
… every one of them will have perished and been lost, nay will have
come to naught and become a thing unremembered, even as the dust
itself.”
To Mírzá Áqá Ján, “the first to believe” in Him, designated
later as Khádimu’lláh (Servant of God) — a Bábí youth,
aflame with devotion, who, under the influence of a dream he had of
the Báb, and as a result of the perusal of certain writings of
Bahá’u’lláh, had precipitately forsaken his home in Káshán
and traveled to ‘Iráq, in the hope of attaining His presence, and
who from then on served Him assiduously for a period of forty years
in his triple function of amanuensis, companion and attendant — to
him Bahá’u’lláh, more than to any one else, was moved to
disclose, at this critical juncture, a glimpse of the as yet
unrevealed glory of His station. This same Mírzá Áqá Ján,
recounting to Nabíl his experiences, on that first and never to be
forgotten night spent in Karbilá, in the presence of his newly-found
Beloved, Who was then a guest of Ḥájí Mírzá
Ḥasan-i-Ḥakím-Báshí, had given the following testimony:
“As it was summer-time Bahá’u’lláh was in the habit of
passing His evenings and of sleeping on the roof of the House.…
That night, when He had gone to sleep, I, according to His
directions, lay down for a brief rest, at a distance of a few feet
from Him. No sooner had I risen, and … started to offer my prayers,
in a corner of the roof which adjoined a wall, than I beheld His
blessed Person rise and walk towards me. When He reached me He said:
‘You, too, are awake.’
Whereupon He began to chant and
pace back and forth. How shall I ever describe that voice and the
verses it intoned, and His gait, as He strode before me! Methinks,
with every step He took and every word He uttered thousands of oceans
of light surged before my face, and thousands of worlds of
incomparable splendor were unveiled to my eyes, and thousands of suns
blazed their light upon me! In the moonlight that streamed upon Him,
He thus continued to walk and to chant. Every time He approached me
He would pause, and, in a tone so wondrous that no tongue can
describe it, would say: ‘Hear Me, My son. By God, the True One!
This Cause will assuredly be made manifest. Heed thou not the idle
talk of the people of the Bayán, who pervert the meaning of every
word.’
In this manner He continued to walk and chant, and to
address me these words until the first streaks of dawn appeared.…
Afterwards I removed His bedding to His room, and, having prepared
His tea for Him, was dismissed from His presence.”
The confidence instilled in Mírzá Áqá Ján by this unexpected and
sudden contact with the spirit and directing genius of a new-born
Revelation stirred his soul to its depths — a soul already afire with
a consuming love born of his recognition of the ascendancy which his
newly-found Master had already achieved over His fellow-disciples in
both ‘Iráq and Persia. This intense adoration that informed his
whole being, and which could neither be suppressed nor concealed, was
instantly detected by both Mírzá Yaḥyá and his
fellow-conspirator Siyyid Muḥammad. The circumstances leading to
the revelation of the Tablet of Kullu’ṭ-Ṭa‘ám, written
during that period, at the request of Ḥájí Mírzá
Kamálu’d-Dín-i-Naráqí, a Bábí of honorable rank and high
culture, could not but aggravate a situation that had already become
serious and menacing. Impelled by a desire to receive illumination
from Mírzá Yaḥyá concerning the meaning of the Qur’ánic verse
“All food was allowed to the children of Israel,”
Ḥájí
Mírzá Kamálu’d-Dín had requested him to write a commentary upon
it — a request which was granted, but with reluctance and in a manner
which showed such incompetence and superficiality as to disillusion
Ḥájí Mírzá Kamálu’d-Dín, and to destroy his confidence in
its author. Turning to Bahá’u’lláh and repeating his request,
he was honored by a Tablet, in which Israel and his children were
identified with the Báb and His followers respectively — a Tablet
which by reason of the allusions it contained, the beauty of its
language and the cogency of its argument, so enraptured the soul of
its recipient that he would have, but for the restraining hand of
Bahá’u’lláh, proclaimed forthwith his discovery of God’s
hidden Secret in the person of the One Who had revealed it.
To these evidences of an ever deepening veneration for Bahá’u’lláh
and of a passionate attachment to His person were now being added
further grounds for the outbreak of the pent-up jealousies which His
mounting prestige evoked in the breasts of His ill-wishers and
enemies. The steady extension of the circle of His acquaintances and
admirers; His friendly intercourse with officials including the
governor of the city; the unfeigned homage offered Him, on so many
occasions and so spontaneously, by men who had once been
distinguished companions of Siyyid Káẓim; the disillusionment
which the persistent concealment of Mírzá Yaḥyá, and the
unflattering reports circulated regarding his character and
abilities, had engendered; the signs of increasing independence, of
innate sagacity and inherent superiority and capacity for leadership
unmistakably exhibited by Bahá’u’lláh Himself — all combined to
widen the breach which the infamous and crafty Siyyid Muḥammad had
sedulously contrived to create.
A clandestine opposition, whose aim was to nullify every effort
exerted, and frustrate every design conceived, by Bahá’u’lláh
for the rehabilitation of a distracted community, could now be
clearly discerned. Insinuations, whose purpose was to sow the seeds
of doubt and suspicion and to represent Him as a usurper, as the
subverter of the laws instituted by the Báb, and the wrecker of His
Cause, were being incessantly circulated. His Epistles,
interpretations, invocations and commentaries were being covertly and
indirectly criticized, challenged and misrepresented. An attempt to
injure His person was even set afoot but failed to materialize.
The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows was now running over. All
His exhortations, all His efforts to remedy a rapidly deteriorating
situation, had remained fruitless. The velocity of His manifold woes
was hourly and visibly increasing. Upon the sadness that filled His
soul and the gravity of the situation confronting Him, His writings,
revealed during that somber period, throw abundant light. In some of
His prayers He poignantly confesses that “tribulation upon
tribulation”
had gathered about Him, that “adversaries
with one consent”
had fallen upon Him, that “wretchedness”
had grievously touched Him, and that “woes at their blackest”
had befallen Him. God Himself He calls upon as a Witness to His
“sighs and lamentations,”
His “powerlessness, poverty
and destitution,”
to the “injuries”
He sustained,
and the “abasement”
He suffered. “So grievous hath
been My weeping,”
He, in one of these prayers, avows, “that
I have been prevented from making mention of Thee and singing Thy
praises.”
“So loud hath been the voice of My lamentation,”
He, in another passage, avers, “that every mother mourning for
her child would be amazed, and would still her weeping and her
grief.”
“The wrongs which I suffer,”
He, in His
Lawḥ-i-Maryam, laments, “have blotted out the wrongs suffered
by My First Name (the Báb) from the Tablet of creation.”
“O
Maryam!”
He continues, “From the Land of Ṭá (Ṭihrán),
after countless afflictions, We reached ‘Iráq, at the bidding of
the Tyrant of Persia, where, after the fetters of Our foes, We were
afflicted with the perfidy of Our friends. God knoweth what befell Me
thereafter!”
And again: “I have borne what no man, be he
of the past or of the future, hath borne or will bear.”
“Oceans
of sadness,”
He testifies in the Tablet of Kullu’ṭ-Ṭa‘ám,
“have surged over Me, a drop of which no soul could bear to
drink. Such is My grief that My soul hath well nigh departed from My
body.”
“Give ear, O Kamál!”
He, in that same
Tablet, depicting His plight, exclaims, “to the voice of this
lowly, this forsaken ant, that hath hid itself in its hole, and whose
desire is to depart from your midst, and vanish from your sight, by
reason of that which the hands of men have wrought. God, verily, hath
been witness between Me and His servants.”
And again: “Woe
is Me, woe is Me … All that I have seen from the day on which I
first drank the pure milk from the breast of My mother until this
moment hath been effaced from My memory, in consequence of that which
the hands of the people have committed.”
Furthermore, in His
Qaṣídiy-i-Varqá’íyyih, an ode revealed during the days of His
retirement to the mountains of Kurdistán, in praise of the Maiden
personifying the Spirit of God recently descended upon Him, He thus
gives vent to the agonies of His sorrow-laden heart: “Noah’s
flood is but the measure of the tears I have shed, and Abraham’s
fire an ebullition of My soul. Jacob’s grief is but a reflection of
My sorrows, and Job’s afflictions a fraction of my calamity.”
“Pour out patience upon Me, O My Lord!”
— such is His
supplication in one of His prayers, “and render Me victorious
over the transgressors.”
“In these days,”
He,
describing in the Kitáb-i-Íqán the virulence of the jealousy
which, at that time, was beginning to bare its venomous fangs, has
written, “such odors of jealousy are diffused, that … from the
beginning of the foundation of the world … until the present day,
such malice, envy and hate have in no wise appeared, nor will they
ever be witnessed in the future.”
“For two years or rather
less,”
He, likewise, in another Tablet, declares, “I
shunned all else but God, and closed Mine eyes to all except Him,
that haply the fire of hatred may die down and the heat of jealousy
abate.”
Mírzá Áqá Ján himself has testified: “That Blessed Beauty
evinced such sadness that the limbs of my body trembled.” He has,
likewise, related, as reported by Nabíl in his narrative, that,
shortly before Bahá’u’lláh’s retirement, he had on one
occasion seen Him, between dawn and sunrise, suddenly come out from
His house, His night-cap still on His head, showing such signs of
perturbation that he was powerless to gaze into His face, and while
walking, angrily remark: “These creatures are the same creatures
who for three thousand years have worshipped idols, and bowed down
before the Golden Calf. Now, too, they are fit for nothing better.
What relation can there be between this people and Him Who is the
Countenance of Glory? What ties can bind them to the One Who is the
supreme embodiment of all that is lovable?”
“I stood,”
declared Mírzá Áqá Ján, “rooted to the spot, lifeless, dried
up as a dead tree, ready to fall under the impact of the stunning
power of His words. Finally, He said: ‘Bid them recite: “Is
there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He
is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!” Tell
them to repeat it five hundred times, nay, a thousand times, by day
and by night, sleeping and waking, that haply the Countenance of
Glory may be unveiled to their eyes, and tiers of light descend upon
them.’
He Himself, I was subsequently informed, recited this
same verse, His face betraying the utmost sadness.… Several times
during those days, He was heard to remark: ‘We have, for a
while, tarried amongst this people, and failed to discern the
slightest response on their part.’
Oftentimes He alluded to His
disappearance from our midst, yet none of us understood His meaning.”
His two year retirement to Kurdistán
Finally, discerning, as He Himself testifies in the Kitáb-i-Íqán,
“the signs of impending events,”
He decided that before
they happened He would retire. “The one object of Our
retirement,”
He, in that same Book affirms, “was to avoid
becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of
disturbance unto Our companions, the means of injury to any soul, or
the cause of sorrow to any heart.”
“Our withdrawal,”
He, moreover, in that same passage emphatically asserts,
“contemplated no return, and Our separation hoped for no
reunion.”
Suddenly, and without informing any one even among the members of His
own family, on the 12th of Rajab 1270 A.H. (April 10, 1854), He
departed, accompanied by an attendant, a Muḥammadan named
Abu’l-Qásim-i-Hamadání, to whom He gave a sum of money,
instructing him to act as a merchant and use it for his own purposes.
Shortly after, that servant was attacked by thieves and killed, and
Bahá’u’lláh was left entirely alone in His wanderings through
the wastes of Kurdistán, a region whose sturdy and warlike people
were known for their age-long hostility to the Persians, whom they
regarded as seceders from the Faith of Islám, and from whom they
differed in their outlook, race and language.
Attired in the garb of a traveler, coarsely clad, taking with Him
nothing but his kashkúl (alms-bowl) and a change of clothes,
and assuming the name of Darvísh Muḥammad, Bahá’u’lláh
retired to the wilderness, and lived for a time on a mountain named
Sar-Galú, so far removed from human habitations that only twice a
year, at seed sowing and harvest time, it was visited by the peasants
of that region. Alone and undisturbed, He passed a considerable part
of His retirement on the top of that mountain in a rude structure,
made of stone, which served those peasants as a shelter against the
extremities of the weather. At times His dwelling-place was a cave to
which He refers in His Tablets addressed to the famous Shaykh
‘Abdu’r-Raḥmán and to Maryam, a kinswoman of His. “I
roamed the wilderness of resignation”
He thus depicts, in the
Lawḥ-i-Maryam, the rigors of His austere solitude, “traveling
in such wise that in My exile every eye wept sore over Me, and all
created things shed tears of blood because of My anguish. The birds
of the air were My companions and the beasts of the field My
associates.”
“From My eyes,”
He, referring in the
Kitáb-i-Íqán to those days, testifies, “there rained tears of
anguish, and in My bleeding heart surged an ocean of agonizing pain.
Many a night I had no food for sustenance, and many a day My body
found no rest.… Alone I communed with My spirit, oblivious of the
world and all that is therein.”
In the odes He revealed, whilst wrapped in His devotions during those
days of utter seclusion, and in the prayers and soliloquies which, in
verse and prose, both in Arabic and Persian, poured from His
sorrow-laden soul, many of which He was wont to chant aloud to
Himself, at dawn and during the watches of the night, He lauded the
names and attributes of His Creator, extolled the glories and
mysteries of His own Revelation, sang the praises of that Maiden that
personified the Spirit of God within Him, dwelt on His loneliness and
His past and future tribulations, expatiated upon the blindness of
His generation, the perfidy of His friends and the perversity of His
enemies, affirmed His determination to arise and, if needs be, offer
up His life for the vindication of His Cause, stressed those
essential pre-requisites which every seeker after Truth must possess,
and recalled, in anticipation of the lot that was to be His, the
tragedy of the Imám Ḥusayn in Karbilá, the plight of Muḥammad
in Mecca, the sufferings of Jesus at the hands of the Jews, the
trials of Moses inflicted by Pharaoh and his people and the ordeal of
Joseph as He languished in a pit by reason of the treachery of His
brothers. These initial and impassioned outpourings of a Soul
struggling to unburden itself, in the solitude of a self-imposed
exile (many of them, alas lost to posterity) are, with the Tablet of
Kullu’ṭ-Ṭa‘ám and the poem entitled Rashḥ-i-‘Amá,
revealed in Ṭihrán, the first fruits of His Divine Pen. They are
the forerunners of those immortal works — the Kitáb-i-Íqán, the
Hidden Words and the Seven Valleys — which in the years preceding His
Declaration in Baghdád, were to enrich so vastly the steadily
swelling volume of His writings, and which paved the way for a
further flowering of His prophetic genius in His epoch-making
Proclamation to the world, couched in the form of mighty Epistles to
the kings and rulers of mankind, and finally for the last fruition of
His Mission in the Laws and Ordinances of His Dispensation formulated
during His confinement in the Most Great Prison of ‘Akká.
Bahá’u’lláh was still pursuing His solitary existence on that
mountain when a certain Shaykh, a resident of
Sulaymáníyyih, who owned a property in that neighborhood, sought
Him out, as directed in a dream he had of the Prophet Muḥammad.
Shortly after this contact was established, Shaykh
Ismá‘íl, the leader of the Khálidíyyih Order, who lived
in Sulaymáníyyih, visited Him, and succeeded, after repeated
requests, in obtaining His consent to transfer His residence to that
town. Meantime His friends in Baghdád had discovered His
whereabouts, and had dispatched Shaykh Sulṭán, the
father-in-law of Áqáy-i-Kalím, to beg Him to return; and it was
now while He was living in Sulaymáníyyih, in a room belonging to
the Takyiy-i-Mawláná Khálid (theological seminary) that
their messenger arrived. “I found,” this same Shaykh
Sulṭán, recounting his experiences to Nabíl, has stated, “all
those who lived with Him in that place, from their Master down to the
humblest neophyte, so enamoured of, and carried away by their love
for Bahá’u’lláh, and so unprepared to contemplate the
possibility of His departure that I felt certain that were I to
inform them of the purpose of my visit, they would not have hesitated
to put an end to my life.”
Not long after Bahá’u’lláh’s arrival in Kurdistán, Shaykh
Sulṭán has related, He was able, through His personal contacts
with Shaykh ‘Uthmán, Shaykh
‘Abdu’r-Raḥmán, and Shaykh Ismá‘íl, the
honored and undisputed leaders of the Naqshbandíyyih, the
Qádiríyyih and the Khálidíyyih Orders respectively, to win
their hearts completely and establish His ascendancy over them. The
first of these, Shaykh ‘Uthmán, included no
less a person than the Sulṭán himself and his entourage among his
adherents. The second, in reply to whose query the “Four Valleys”
was later revealed, commanded the unwavering allegiance of at least a
hundred thousand devout followers, while the third was held in such
veneration by his supporters that they regarded him as co-equal with
Khálid himself, the founder of the Order.
When Bahá’u’lláh arrived in Sulaymáníyyih none at first,
owing to the strict silence and reserve He maintained, suspected Him
of being possessed of any learning or wisdom. It was only
accidentally, through seeing a specimen of His exquisite penmanship
shown to them by one of the students who waited upon Him, that the
curiosity of the learned instructors and students of that seminary
was aroused, and they were impelled to approach Him and test the
degree of His knowledge and the extent of His familiarity with the
arts and sciences current amongst them. That seat of learning had
been renowned for its vast endowments, its numerous takyihs, and its
association with Ṣaláḥí’d-Dín-i-Ayyúbí and his
descendants; from it some of the most illustrious exponents of Sunní
Islám had gone forth to teach its precepts, and now a delegation,
headed by Shaykh Ismá‘íl himself, and consisting of
its most eminent doctors and most distinguished students, called upon
Bahá’u’lláh, and, finding Him willing to reply to any questions
they might wish to address Him, they requested Him to elucidate for
them, in the course of several interviews, the abstruse passages
contained in the Futúḥát-i-Makkíyyih, the celebrated work of the
famous Shaykh Muḥyi’d-Dín-i-‘Arabí. “God
is My witness,”
was Bahá’u’lláh’s instant reply to the
learned delegation, “that I have never seen the book you refer
to. I regard, however, through the power of God, … whatever you
wish me to do as easy of accomplishment.”
Directing one of them
to read aloud to Him, every day, a page of that book, He was able to
resolve their perplexities in so amazing a fashion that they were
lost in admiration. Not contenting Himself with a mere clarification
of the obscure passages of the text, He would interpret for them the
mind of its author, and expound his doctrine, and unfold his purpose.
At times He would even go so far as to question the soundness of
certain views propounded in that book, and would Himself vouchsafe a
correct presentation of the issues that had been misunderstood, and
would support it with proofs and evidences that were wholly
convincing to His listeners.
Amazed by the profundity of His insight and the compass of His
understanding, they were impelled to seek from Him what they
considered to be a conclusive and final evidence of the unique power
and knowledge which He now appeared in their eyes to possess. “No
one among the mystics, the wise, and the learned,” they claimed,
while requesting this further favor from Him, “has hitherto proved
himself capable of writing a poem in a rhyme and meter identical with
that of the longer of the two odes, entitled Qaṣídiy-i-Tá’íyyih
composed by Ibn-i-Fárid. We beg you to write for us a poem in that
same meter and rhyme.” This request was complied with, and no less
than two thousand verses, in exactly the manner they had specified,
were dictated by Him, out of which He selected one hundred and
twenty-seven, which He permitted them to keep, deeming the subject
matter of the rest premature and unsuitable to the needs of the
times. It is these same one hundred and twenty-seven verses that
constitute the Qaṣídiy-i-Varqá’íyyih, so familiar to, and
widely circulated amongst, His Arabic speaking followers.
Such was their reaction to this marvelous demonstration of the
sagacity and genius of Bahá’u’lláh that they unanimously
acknowledged every single verse of that poem to be endowed with a
force, beauty and power far surpassing anything contained in either
the major or minor odes composed by that celebrated poet.
This episode, by far the most outstanding among the events that
transpired during the two years of Bahá’u’lláh’s absence from
Baghdád, immensely stimulated the interest with which an
increasing number of the ‘ulamás, the scholars, the shaykhs,
the doctors, the holy men and princes who had congregated in the
seminaries of Sulaymáníyyih and Karkúk, were now following His
daily activities. Through His numerous discourses and epistles He
disclosed new vistas to their eyes, resolved the perplexities that
agitated their minds, unfolded the inner meaning of many hitherto
obscure passages in the writings of various commentators, poets and
theologians, of which they had remained unaware, and reconciled the
seemingly contradictory assertions which abounded in these
dissertations, poems and treatises. Such was the esteem and respect
entertained for Him that some held Him as One of the “Men of the
Unseen,” others accounted Him an adept in alchemy and the science
of divination, still others designated Him “a pivot of the
universe,” whilst a not inconsiderable number among His admirers
went so far as to believe that His station was no less than that of a
prophet. Kurds, Arabs, and Persians, learned and illiterate, both
high and low, young and old, who had come to know Him, regarded Him
with equal reverence, and not a few among them with genuine and
profound affection, and this despite certain assertions and allusions
to His station He had made in public, which, had they fallen from the
lips of any other member of His race, would have provoked such fury
as to endanger His life. Small wonder that Bahá’u’lláh Himself
should have, in the Lawḥ-i-Maryam, pronounced the period of His
retirement as “the mightiest testimony”
to, and “the
most perfect and conclusive evidence”
of, the truth of His
Revelation. “In a short time,”
is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
own testimony, “Kurdistán was magnetized with His love. During
this period Bahá’u’lláh lived in poverty. His garments were
those of the poor and needy. His food was that of the indigent and
lowly. An atmosphere of majesty haloed Him as the sun at midday.
Everywhere He was greatly revered and loved.”
While the foundations of Bahá’u’lláh’s future greatness were
being laid in a strange land and amidst a strange people, the
situation of the Bábí community was rapidly going from bad to
worse. Pleased and emboldened by His unexpected and prolonged
withdrawal from the scene of His labors, the stirrers of mischief
with their deluded associates were busily engaged in extending the
range of their nefarious activities. Mírzá Yaḥyá, closeted most
of the time in his house, was secretly directing, through his
correspondence with those Bábís whom he completely trusted, a
campaign designed to utterly discredit Bahá’u’lláh. In his fear
of any potential adversary he had dispatched Mírzá
Muḥammad-i-Mázindarání, one of his supporters, to Ádhirbáyján
for the express purpose of murdering Dayyán, the “repository of
the knowledge of God,” whom he surnamed “Father of Iniquities”
and stigmatized as “Ṭághút,” and whom the Báb had
extolled as the “Third Letter to believe in Him Whom God shall
make manifest.”
In his folly he had, furthermore, induced Mírzá
Áqá Ján to proceed to Núr, and there await a propitious moment
when he could make a successful attempt on the life of the sovereign.
His shamelessness and effrontery had waxed so great as to lead him to
perpetrate himself, and permit Siyyid Muḥammad to repeat after him,
an act so odious that Bahá’u’lláh characterized it as “a
most grievous betrayal,”
inflicting dishonor upon the Báb, and
which “overwhelmed all lands with sorrow.”
He even, as a
further evidence of the enormity of his crimes, ordered that the
cousin of the Báb, Mírzá ‘Alí-Akbar, a fervent admirer of
Dayyán, be secretly put to death — a command which was carried out
in all its iniquity. As to Siyyid Muḥammad, now given free rein by
his master, Mírzá Yaḥyá, he had surrounded himself, as Nabíl who
was at that time with him in Karbilá categorically asserts, with a
band of ruffians, whom he allowed, and even encouraged, to snatch at
night the turbans from the heads of wealthy pilgrims who had
congregated in Karbilá, to steal their shoes, to rob the shrine of
the Imám Ḥusayn of its divans and candles, and seize the drinking
cups from the public fountains. The depths of degradation to which
these so-called adherents of the Faith of the Báb had sunk could not
but evoke in Nabíl the memory of the sublime renunciation shown by
the conduct of the companions of Mullá Ḥusayn, who, at the
suggestion of their leader, had scornfully cast by the wayside the
gold, the silver and turquoise in their possession, or shown by the
behavior of Vaḥíd who refused to allow even the least valuable
amongst the treasures which his sumptuously furnished house in Yazd
contained to be removed ere it was pillaged by the mob, or shown by
the decision of Ḥujjat not to permit his companions, who were on
the brink of starvation, to lay hands on the property of others, even
though it were to save their own lives.
Such was the audacity and effrontery of these demoralized and
misguided Bábís that no less than twenty-five persons, according to
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s testimony, had the presumption to declare
themselves to be the Promised One foretold by the Báb! Such was the
decline in their fortunes that they hardly dared show themselves in
public. Kurds and Persians vied with each other, when confronting
them in the streets, in heaping abuse upon them, and in vilifying
openly the Cause which they professed. Little wonder that on His
return to Baghdád Bahá’u’lláh should have described the
situation then existing in these words: “We found no more than a
handful of souls, faint and dispirited, nay utterly lost and dead.
The Cause of God had ceased to be on any one’s lips, nor was any
heart receptive to its message.”
Such was the sadness that
overwhelmed Him on His arrival that He refused for some time to leave
His house, except for His visits to Káẓimayn and for His
occasional meeting with a few of His friends who resided in that town
and in Baghdád.
The tragic situation that had developed in the course of His two
years’ absence now imperatively demanded His return. “From the
Mystic Source,”
He Himself explains in the Kitáb-i-Íqán,
“there came the summons bidding Us return whence We came.
Surrendering Our will to His, We submitted to His injunction.”
“By God besides Whom there is none other God!”
is His
emphatic assertion to Shaykh Sulṭán, as reported by
Nabíl in his narrative, “But for My recognition of the fact
that the blessed Cause of the Primal Point was on the verge of being
completely obliterated, and all the sacred blood poured out in the
path of God would have been shed in vain, I would in no wise have
consented to return to the people of the Bayán, and would have
abandoned them to the worship of the idols their imaginations had
fashioned.”
Mírzá Yaḥyá, realizing full well to what a pass his unrestrained
leadership of the Faith had brought him, had, moreover, insistently
and in writing, besought Him to return. No less urgent were the
pleadings of His own kindred and friends, particularly His
twelve-year old Son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Whose grief and
loneliness had so consumed His soul that, in a conversation recorded
by Nabíl in his narrative, He had avowed that subsequent to the
departure of Bahá’u’lláh He had in His boyhood grown old.
Deciding to terminate the period of His retirement Bahá’u’lláh
bade farewell to the shaykhs of Sulaymáníyyih, who
now numbered among His most ardent and, as their future conduct
demonstrated, staunchest admirers. Accompanied by Shaykh
Sulṭán, He retraced His steps to Baghdád, on “the
banks of the River of Tribulations,”
as He Himself termed it,
proceeding by slow stages, realizing, as He declared to His
fellow-traveler, that these last days of His retirement would be “the
only days of peace and tranquillity”
left to Him, “days
which will never again fall to My lot.”
On the 12th of Rajab 1272 A.H. (March 19, 1856) He arrived in
Baghdád, exactly two lunar years after His departure for
Kurdistán.
The return of Bahá’u’lláh from Sulaymáníyyih to Baghdád
marks a turning point of the utmost significance in the history of
the first Bahá’í century. The tide of the fortunes of the Faith,
having reached its lowest ebb, was now beginning to surge back, and
was destined to roll on, steadily and mightily, to a new high
water-mark, associated this time with the Declaration of His Mission,
on the eve of His banishment to Constantinople. With His return to
Baghdád a firm anchorage was now being established, an
anchorage such as the Faith had never known in its history. Never
before, except during the first three years of its life, could that
Faith claim to have possessed a fixed and accessible center to which
its adherents could turn for guidance, and from which they could
derive continuous and unobstructed inspiration. No less than half of
the Báb’s short-lived ministry was spent on the remotest border of
His native country, where He was concealed and virtually cut off from
the vast majority of His disciples. The period immediately after His
martyrdom was marked by a confusion that was even more deplorable
than the isolation caused by His enforced captivity. Nor when the
Revelation which He had foretold made its appearance was it succeeded
by an immediate declaration that could enable the members of a
distracted community to rally round the person of their expected
Deliverer. The prolonged self-concealment of Mírzá Yaḥyá, the
center provisionally appointed pending the manifestation of the
Promised One; the nine months’ absence of Bahá’u’lláh from
His native land, while on a visit to Karbilá, followed swiftly by
His imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál, by His banishment to
‘Iráq, and afterwards by His retirement to Kurdistán — all
combined to prolong the phase of instability and suspense through
which the Bábí community had to pass.
Enhancement of the prestige of the Bábí Community
Now at last, in spite of Bahá’u’lláh’s reluctance to unravel
the mystery surrounding His own position, the Bábís found
themselves able to center both their hopes and their movements round
One Whom they believed (whatever their views as to His station)
capable of insuring the stability and integrity of their Faith. The
orientation which the Faith had thus acquired and the fixity of the
center towards which it now gravitated continued, in one form or
another, to be its outstanding features, of which it was never again
to be deprived.
The Faith of the Báb, as already observed, had, in consequence of
the successive and formidable blows it had received, reached the
verge of extinction. Nor was the momentous Revelation vouchsafed to
Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-Chál productive at once of
any tangible results of a nature that would exercise a stabilizing
influence on a well-nigh disrupted community. Bahá’u’lláh’s
unexpected banishment had been a further blow to its members, who had
learned to place their reliance upon Him. Mírzá Yaḥyá’s
seclusion and inactivity further accelerated the process of
disintegration that had set in. Bahá’u’lláh’s prolonged
retirement to Kurdistán seemed to have set the seal on its complete
dissolution.
Now, however, the tide that had ebbed in so alarming a measure was
turning, bearing with it, as it rose to flood point, those
inestimable benefits that were to herald the announcement of the
Revelation already secretly disclosed to Bahá’u’lláh.
During the seven years that elapsed between the resumption of His
labors and the declaration of His prophetic mission — years to which
we now direct our attention — it would be no exaggeration to say that
the Bahá’í community, under the name and in the shape of a
re-arisen Bábí community was born and was slowly taking shape,
though its Creator still appeared in the guise of, and continued to
labor as, one of the foremost disciples of the Báb. It was a period
during which the prestige of the community’s nominal head steadily
faded from the scene, paling before the rising splendor of Him Who
was its actual Leader and Deliverer. It was a period in the course of
which the first fruits of an exile, endowed with incalculable
potentialities, ripened and were garnered. It was a period that will
go down in history as one during which the prestige of a recreated
community was immensely enhanced, its morals entirely reformed, its
recognition of Him who rehabilitated its fortunes enthusiastically
affirmed, its literature enormously enriched, and its victories over
its new adversaries universally acknowledged.
The prestige of the community, and particularly that of Bahá’u’lláh,
now began from its first inception in Kurdistán to mount in a
steadily rising crescendo. Bahá’u’lláh had scarcely gathered up
again the reins of the authority he had relinquished when the devout
admirers He had left behind in Sulaymáníyyih started to flock to
Baghdád, with the name of “Darvísh Muḥammad” on
their lips, and the “house of Mírzá Músá the Bábí” as their
goal. Astonished at the sight of so many ‘ulamás and Ṣúfís of
Kurdish origin, of both the Qádiríyyih and Khálidíyyih
Orders, thronging the house of Bahá’u’lláh, and impelled by
racial and sectarian rivalry, the religious leaders of the city, such
as the renowned Ibn-i-Álúsí, the Muftí of Baghdád,
together with Shaykh ‘Abdu’s-Salám, Shaykh
‘Abdu’l-Qádir and Siyyid Dáwúdí, began to seek His presence,
and, having obtained completely satisfying answers to their several
queries, enrolled themselves among the band of His earliest admirers.
The unqualified recognition by these outstanding leaders of those
traits that distinguished the character and conduct of Bahá’u’lláh
stimulated the curiosity, and later evoked the unstinted praise, of a
great many observers of less conspicuous position, among whom figured
poets, mystics and notables, who either resided in, or visited, the
city. Government officials, foremost among whom were ‘Abdu’lláh
Páshá and his lieutenant Maḥmúd Áqá, and Mullá ‘Alí
Mardán, a Kurd well-known in those circles, were gradually brought
into contact with Him, and lent their share in noising abroad His
fast-spreading fame. Nor could those distinguished Persians, who
either lived in Baghdád and its environs or visited as
pilgrims the holy places, remain impervious to the spell of His
charm. Princes of the royal blood, amongst whom were such personages
as the Ná’ibu’l-Íyálih, the Shujá‘u’d-Dawlih, the
Sayfu’d-Dawlih, and Zaynu’l-‘Ábidín Khán, the
Fakhru’d-Dawlih, were, likewise, irresistibly drawn into the
ever-widening circle of His associates and acquaintances.
Those who, during Bahá’u’lláh’s two years’ absence from
Baghdád, had so persistently reviled and loudly derided His
companions and kindred were, by now, for the most part, silenced. Not
an inconsiderable number among them feigned respect and esteem for
Him, a few claimed to be His defenders and supporters, while others
professed to share His beliefs, and actually joined the ranks of the
community to which He belonged. Such was the extent of the reaction
that had set in that one of them was even heard to boast that, as far
back as the year 1250 A.H. — a decade before the Báb’s
Declaration — he had already perceived and embraced the truth of His
Faith!
Within a few years after Bahá’u’lláh’s return from
Sulaymáníyyih the situation had been completely reversed. The house
of Sulaymán-i-Ghannám, on which the official designation of
the Bayt-i-A‘ẓam (the Most Great House) was later conferred,
known, at that time, as the house of Mírzá Músá, the Bábí, an
extremely modest residence, situated in the Karkh quarter, in
the neighborhood of the western bank of the river, to which
Bahá’u’lláh’s family had moved prior to His return from
Kurdistán, had now become the focal center of a great number of
seekers, visitors and pilgrims, including Kurds, Persians, Arabs and
Turks, and derived from the Muslim, the Jewish and Christian Faiths.
It had, moreover, become a veritable sanctuary to which the victims
of the injustice of the official representative of the Persian
government were wont to flee, in the hope of securing redress for the
wrongs they had suffered.
At the same time an influx of Persian Bábís, whose sole object was
to attain the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, swelled the stream of
visitors that poured through His hospitable doors. Carrying back, on
their return to their native country, innumerable testimonies, both
oral and written, to His steadily rising power and glory, they could
not fail to contribute, in a vast measure, to the expansion and
progress of a newly-reborn Faith. Four of the Báb’s cousins and
His maternal uncle, Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid Muḥammad; a
grand-daughter of Fatḥ-‘Alí Sháh and fervent admirer of
Ṭáhirih, surnamed Varaqatu’r-Riḍván; the erudite Mullá
Muḥammad-i-Qá’iní, surnamed Nabíl-i-Akbar; the already famous
Mullá Ṣádiq-i-Khurásání, surnamed Ismu’lláhu’l-Asdaq,
who with Quddús had been ignominiously persecuted in Shíráz;
Mullá Báqir, one of the Letters of the Living; Siyyid Asadu’lláh,
surnamed Dayyán; the revered Siyyid Javád-i-Karbilá’í; Mírzá
Muḥammad-Ḥasan and Mírzá Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, later
immortalized by the titles of Sulṭánu’sh-Shuhadá
and Maḥbúbu’sh-Shuhadá (King of Martyrs and
Beloved of Martyrs) respectively; Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alíy-i-Nahrí,
whose daughter, at a later date, was joined in wedlock to
‘Abdu’l-Bahá; the immortal Siyyid Ismá‘íl-i-Zavári’í;
Ḥájí Shaykh Muḥammad, surnamed Nabíl by the Báb;
the accomplished Mírzá Áqáy-i-Munír, surnamed
Ismu’lláhu’l-Muníb; the long-suffering Ḥájí Muḥammad-Taqí,
surnamed Ayyúb; Mullá Zaynu’l-‘Ábidín, surnamed
Zaynu’l-Muqarrabín, who had ranked as a highly esteemed
mujtahid — all these were numbered among the visitors and
fellow-disciples who crossed His threshold, caught a glimpse of the
splendor of His majesty, and communicated far and wide the creative
influences instilled into them through their contact with His spirit.
Mullá Muḥammad-i-Zarandí, surnamed Nabíl-i-A‘ẓam, who may
well rank as His Poet-Laureate, His chronicler and His indefatigable
disciple, had already joined the exiles, and had launched out on his
long and arduous series of journeys to Persia in furtherance of the
Cause of his Beloved.
Even those who, in their folly and temerity had, in Baghdád,
in Karbilá, in Qum, in Káshán, in Tabríz and in Ṭihrán,
arrogated to themselves the rights, and assumed the title of “Him
Whom God shall make manifest” were for the most part instinctively
led to seek His presence, confess their error and supplicate His
forgiveness. As time went on, fugitives, driven by the ever-present
fear of persecution, sought, with their wives and children, the
relative security afforded them by close proximity to One who had
already become the rallying point for the members of a sorely-vexed
community. Persians of high eminence, living in exile, rejecting, in
the face of the mounting prestige of Bahá’u’lláh, the dictates
of moderation and prudence, sat, forgetful of their pride, at His
feet, and imbibed, each according to his capacity, a measure of His
spirit and wisdom. Some of the more ambitious among them, such as
‘Abbás Mírzá, a son of Muḥammad Sháh, the Vazír-Niẓám,
and Mírzá Malkam Khán, as well as certain functionaries of
foreign governments, attempted, in their short-sightedness, to secure
His support and assistance for the furtherance of the designs they
cherished, designs which He unhesitatingly and severely condemned.
Nor was the then representative of the British government, Colonel
Sir Arnold Burrows Kemball, consul-general in Baghdád,
insensible of the position which Bahá’u’lláh now occupied.
Entering into friendly correspondence with Him, he, as testified by
Bahá’u’lláh Himself, offered Him the protection of British
citizenship, called on Him in person, and undertook to transmit to
Queen Victoria any communication He might wish to forward to her. He
even expressed his readiness to arrange for the transfer of His
residence to India, or to any place agreeable to Him. This suggestion
Bahá’u’lláh declined, choosing to abide in the dominions of the
Sulṭán of Turkey. And finally, during the last year of His sojourn
in Baghdád the governor Námiq-Páshá, impressed by
the many signs of esteem and veneration in which He was held, called
upon Him to pay his personal tribute to One Who had already achieved
so conspicuous a victory over the hearts and souls of those who had
met Him. So profound was the respect the governor entertained for
Him, Whom he regarded as one of the Lights of the Age, that it was
not until the end of three months, during which he had received five
successive commands from ‘Alí Páshá, that he could bring
himself to inform Bahá’u’lláh that it was the wish of the
Turkish government that He should proceed to the capital. On one
occasion, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Áqáy-i-Kalím had been
delegated by Bahá’u’lláh to visit him, he entertained them with
such elaborate ceremonial that the Deputy-Governor stated that so far
as he knew no notable of the city had ever been accorded by any
governor so warm and courteous a reception. So struck, indeed, had
the Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Majíd been by the favorable reports
received about Bahá’u’lláh from successive governors of Baghdád
(this is the personal testimony given by the Governor’s deputy to
Bahá’u’lláh himself) that he consistently refused to
countenance the requests of the Persian government either to deliver
Him to their representative or to order His expulsion from Turkish
territory.
On no previous occasion, since the inception of the Faith, not even
during the days when the Báb in Iṣfahán, in Tabríz and in Chihríq
was acclaimed by the ovations of an enthusiastic populace, had any of
its exponents risen to such high eminence in the public mind, or
exercised over so diversified a circle of admirers an influence so
far reaching and so potent. Yet unprecedented as was the sway which
Bahá’u’lláh held while, in that primitive age of the Faith, He
was dwelling in Baghdád, its range at that time was modest
when compared with the magnitude of the fame which, at the close of
that same age, and through the immediate inspiration of the Center of
His Covenant, the Faith acquired in both the European and American
continents.
Increasing recognition of the position occupied by Bahá’u’lláh
The ascendancy achieved by Bahá’u’lláh was nowhere better
demonstrated than in His ability to broaden the outlook and transform
the character of the community to which He belonged. Though Himself
nominally a Bábí, though the provisions of the Bayán were still
regarded as binding and inviolable, He was able to inculcate a
standard which, while not incompatible with its tenets, was ethically
superior to the loftiest principles which the Bábí Dispensation had
established. The salutary and fundamental truths advocated by the
Báb, that had either been obscured, neglected or misrepresented,
were moreover elucidated by Bahá’u’lláh, reaffirmed and
instilled afresh into the corporate life of the community, and into
the souls of the individuals who comprised it. The dissociation of
the Bábí Faith from every form of political activity and from all
secret associations and factions; the emphasis placed on the
principle of non-violence; the necessity of strict obedience to
established authority; the ban imposed on all forms of sedition, on
back-biting, retaliation, and dispute; the stress laid on godliness,
kindliness, humility and piety, on honesty and truthfulness, chastity
and fidelity, on justice, toleration, sociability, amity and concord,
on the acquisition of arts and sciences, on self-sacrifice and
detachment, on patience, steadfastness and resignation to the will of
God — all these constitute the salient features of a code of ethical
conduct to which the books, treatises and epistles, revealed during
those years, by the indefatigable pen of Bahá’u’lláh,
unmistakably bear witness.
Reformation of the morals of the Community
“By the aid of God and His divine grace and mercy,”
He
Himself has written with reference to the character and consequences
of His own labors during that period, “We revealed, as a copious
rain, Our verses, and sent them to various parts of the world. We
exhorted all men, and particularly this people, through Our wise
counsels and loving admonitions, and forbade them to engage in
sedition, quarrels, disputes or conflict. As a result of this, and by
the grace of God, waywardness and folly were changed into piety and
understanding, and weapons of war converted into instruments of
peace.”
“Bahá’u’lláh,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá
affirmed, “after His return (from Sulaymáníyyih) made
such strenuous efforts in educating and training this community, in
reforming its manners, in regulating its affairs and in
rehabilitating its fortunes, that in a short while all these troubles
and mischiefs were quenched, and the utmost peace and tranquillity
reigned in men’s hearts.”
And again: “When these
fundamentals were established in the hearts of this people, they
everywhere acted in such wise that, in the estimation of those in
authority, they became famous for the integrity of their character,
the steadfastness of their hearts, the purity of their motives, the
praiseworthiness of their deeds, and the excellence of their
conduct.”
The exalted character of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh
propounded during that period is perhaps best illustrated by the
following statement made by Him in those days to an official who had
reported to Him that, because of the devotion to His person which an
evildoer had professed, he had hesitated to inflict upon that
criminal the punishment he deserved: “Tell him, no one in this
world can claim any relationship to Me except those who, in all their
deeds and in their conduct, follow My example, in such wise that all
the peoples of the earth would be powerless to prevent them from
doing and saying that which is meet and seemly.”
“This
brother of Mine,”
He further declared to that official, “this
Mírzá Músá, who is from the same mother and father as Myself, and
who from his earliest childhood has kept Me company, should he
perpetrate an act contrary to the interests of either the state or
religion, and his guilt be established in your sight, I would be
pleased and appreciate your action were you to bind his hands and
cast him into the river to drown, and refuse to consider the
intercession of any one on his behalf.”
In another connection
He, wishing to stress His strong condemnation of all acts of
violence, had written: “It would be more acceptable in My sight
for a person to harm one of My own sons or relatives rather than
inflict injury upon any soul.”
“Most of those who surrounded Bahá’u’lláh,” wrote Nabíl,
describing the spirit that animated the reformed Bábí community in
Baghdád, “exercised such care in sanctifying and purifying
their souls, that they would suffer no word to cross their lips that
might not conform to the will of God, nor would they take a single
step that might be contrary to His good-pleasure.” “Each one,”
he relates, “had entered into a pact with one of his
fellow-disciples, in which they agreed to admonish one another, and,
if necessary, chastise one another with a number of blows on the
soles of the feet, proportioning the number of strokes to the gravity
of the offense against the lofty standards they had sworn to
observe.” Describing the fervor of their zeal, he states that “not
until the offender had suffered the punishment he had solicited,
would he consent to either eat or drink.”
The complete transformation which the written and spoken word of
Bahá’u’lláh had effected in the outlook and character of His
companions was equalled by the burning devotion which His love had
kindled in their souls. A passionate zeal and fervor, that rivalled
the enthusiasm that had glowed so fiercely in the breasts of the
Báb’s disciples in their moments of greatest exaltation, had now
seized the hearts of the exiles of Baghdád and galvanized
their entire beings. “So inebriated,” Nabíl, describing the
fecundity of this tremendously dynamic spiritual revival, has
written, “so carried away was every one by the sweet savors of the
Morn of Divine Revelation that, methinks, out of every thorn sprang
forth heaps of blossoms, and every seed yielded innumerable
harvests.” “The room of the Most Great House,” that same
chronicler has recorded, “set apart for the reception of
Bahá’u’lláh’s visitors, though dilapidated, and having long
since outgrown its usefulness, vied, through having been trodden by
the blessed footsteps of the Well Beloved, with the Most Exalted
Paradise. Low-roofed, it yet seemed to reach to the stars, and though
it boasted but a single couch, fashioned from the branches of palms,
whereon He Who is the King of Names was wont to sit, it drew to
itself, even as a loadstone, the hearts of the princes.”
It was this same reception room which, in spite of its rude
simplicity, had so charmed the Shujá‘u’d-Dawlih that he
had expressed to his fellow-princes his intention of building a
duplicate of it in his home in Káẓimayn. “He may well
succeed,”
Bahá’u’lláh is reported to have smilingly
remarked when apprized of this intention, “in reproducing
outwardly the exact counterpart of this low-roofed room made of mud
and straw with its diminutive garden. What of his ability to open
onto it the spiritual doors leading to the hidden worlds of God?”
“I know not how to explain it,” another prince, Zaynu’l-‘Ábidín
Khán, the Fakhru’d-Dawlih, describing the atmosphere
which pervaded that reception-room, had affirmed, “were all the
sorrows of the world to be crowded into my heart they would, I feel,
all vanish, when in the presence of Bahá’u’lláh. It is as if I
had entered Paradise itself.”
The joyous feasts which these companions, despite their extremely
modest earnings, continually offered in honor of their Beloved; the
gatherings, lasting far into the night, in which they loudly
celebrated, with prayers, poetry and song, the praises of the Báb,
of Quddús and of Bahá’u’lláh; the fasts they observed; the
vigils they kept; the dreams and visions which fired their souls, and
which they recounted to each other with feelings of unbounded
enthusiasm; the eagerness with which those who served Bahá’u’lláh
performed His errands, waited upon His needs, and carried heavy skins
of water for His ablutions and other domestic purposes; the acts of
imprudence which, in moments of rapture, they occasionally committed;
the expressions of wonder and admiration which their words and acts
evoked in a populace that had seldom witnessed such demonstrations of
religious transport and personal devotion — these, and many others,
will forever remain associated with the history of that immortal
period, intervening between the birth hour of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Revelation and its announcement on the eve of His departure from
‘Iráq.
Numerous and striking are the anecdotes which have been recounted by
those whom duty, accident, or inclination had, in the course of these
poignant years, brought into direct contact with Bahá’u’lláh.
Many and moving are the testimonies of bystanders who were privileged
to gaze on His countenance, observe His gait, or overhear His
remarks, as He moved through the lanes and streets of the city, or
paced the banks of the river; of the worshippers who watched Him pray
in their mosques; of the mendicant, the sick, the aged, and the
unfortunate whom He succored, healed, supported and comforted; of the
visitors, from the haughtiest prince to the meanest beggar, who
crossed His threshold and sat at His feet; of the merchant, the
artisan, and the shopkeeper who waited upon Him and supplied His
daily needs; of His devotees who had perceived the signs of His
hidden glory; of His adversaries who were confounded or disarmed by
the power of His utterance and the warmth of His love; of the priests
and laymen, the noble and learned, who besought Him with the
intention of either challenging His authority, or testing His
knowledge, or investigating His claims, or confessing their
shortcomings, or declaring their conversion to the Cause He had
espoused.
From such a treasury of precious memories it will suffice my purpose
to cite but a single instance, that of one of His ardent lovers, a
native of Zavárih, Siyyid Ismá‘íl by name, surnamed Dhabíḥ
(the Sacrifice), formerly a noted divine, taciturn, meditative and
wholly severed from every earthly tie, whose self-appointed task, on
which he prided himself, was to sweep the approaches of the house in
which Bahá’u’lláh was dwelling. Unwinding his green turban, the
ensign of his holy lineage, from his head, he would, at the hour of
dawn, gather up, with infinite patience, the rubble which the
footsteps of his Beloved had trodden, would blow the dust from the
crannies of the wall adjacent to the door of that house, would
collect the sweepings in the folds of his own cloak, and, scorning to
cast his burden for the feet of others to tread upon, would carry it
as far as the banks of the river and throw it into its waters.
Unable, at length, to contain the ocean of love that surged within
his soul, he, after having denied himself for forty days both sleep
and sustenance, and rendering for the last time the service so dear
to his heart, betook himself, one day, to the banks of the river, on
the road to Káẓimayn, performed his ablutions, lay down on his
back, with his face turned towards Baghdád, severed his
throat with a razor, laid the razor upon his breast, and expired.
(1275 A.H.)
Nor was he the only one who had meditated such an act and was
determined to carry it out. Others were ready to follow suit, had not
Bahá’u’lláh promptly intervened, and ordered the refugees
living in Baghdád to return immediately to their native land.
Nor could the authorities, when it was definitely established that
Dhabíḥ had died by his own hand, remain indifferent to a
Cause whose Leader could inspire so rare a devotion in, and hold such
absolute sway over, the hearts of His lovers. Apprized of the
apprehensions that episode had evoked in certain quarters in Baghdád,
Bahá’u’lláh is reported to have remarked: “Siyyid Ismá‘íl
was possessed of such power and might that were he to be confronted
by all the peoples of the earth, he would, without doubt, be able to
establish his ascendancy over them.”
“No blood,”
He
is reported to have said with reference to this same Dhabíḥ,
whom He extolled as “King and Beloved of Martyrs,”
“has,
till now, been poured upon the earth as pure as the blood he shed.”
“So intoxicated were those who had quaffed from the cup of
Bahá’u’lláh’s presence,” is yet another testimony from the
pen of Nabíl, who was himself an eye-witness of most of these
stirring episodes, “that in their eyes the palaces of kings
appeared more ephemeral than a spider’s web.… The celebrations
and festivities that were theirs were such as the kings of the earth
had never dreamt of.” “I, myself with two others,” he relates,
“lived in a room which was devoid of furniture. Bahá’u’lláh
entered it one day, and, looking about Him, remarked: ‘Its
emptiness pleases Me. In My estimation it is preferable to many a
spacious palace, inasmuch as the beloved of God are occupied in it
with the remembrance of the Incomparable Friend, with hearts that are
wholly emptied of the dross of this world.’” His own life was
characterized by that same austerity, and evinced that same
simplicity which marked the lives of His beloved companions. “There
was a time in ‘Iráq,”
He Himself affirms, in one of His
Tablets, “when the Ancient Beauty … had no change of linen.
The one shirt He possessed would be washed, dried and worn again.”
“Many a night,” continues Nabíl, depicting the lives of those
self-oblivious companions, “no less than ten persons subsisted on
no more than a pennyworth of dates. No one knew to whom actually
belonged the shoes, the cloaks, or the robes that were to be found in
their houses. Whoever went to the bazaar could claim that the shoes
upon his feet were his own, and each one who entered the presence of
Bahá’u’lláh could affirm that the cloak and robe he then wore
belonged to him. Their own names they had forgotten, their hearts
were emptied of aught else except adoration for their Beloved.… O,
for the joy of those days, and the gladness and wonder of those
hours!”
Expansion of Bábí literature
The enormous expansion in the scope and volume of Bahá’u’lláh’s
writings, after His return from Sulaymáníyyih, is yet another
distinguishing feature of the period under review. The verses that
streamed during those years from His pen, described as “a
copious rain”
by Himself, whether in the form of epistles,
exhortations, commentaries, apologies, dissertations, prophecies,
prayers, odes or specific Tablets, contributed, to a marked degree,
to the reformation and progressive unfoldment of the Bábí
community, to the broadening of its outlook, to the expansion of its
activities and to the enlightenment of the minds of its members. So
prolific was this period, that during the first two years after His
return from His retirement, according to the testimony of Nabíl, who
was at that time living in Baghdád, the unrecorded verses
that streamed from His lips averaged, in a single day and night, the
equivalent of the Qur’án! As to those verses which He either
dictated or wrote Himself, their number was no less remarkable than
either the wealth of material they contained, or the diversity of
subjects to which they referred. A vast, and indeed the greater,
proportion of these writings were, alas, lost irretrievably to
posterity. No less an authority than Mírzá Áqá Ján,
Bahá’u’lláh’s amanuensis, affirms, as reported by Nabíl,
that by the express order of Bahá’u’lláh, hundreds of thousands
of verses, mostly written by His own hand, were obliterated and cast
into the river. “Finding me reluctant to execute His orders,”
Mírzá Áqá Ján has related to Nabíl, “Bahá’u’lláh would
reassure me saying: ‘None is to be found at this time worthy to
hear these melodies.’ … Not once, or twice, but innumerable
times, was I commanded to repeat this act.” A certain Muḥammad
Karím, a native of Shíráz, who had been a witness to the
rapidity and the manner in which the Báb had penned the verses with
which He was inspired, has left the following testimony to posterity,
after attaining, during those days, the presence of Bahá’u’lláh,
and beholding with his own eyes what he himself had considered to be
the only proof of the mission of the Promised One: “I bear witness
that the verses revealed by Bahá’u’lláh were superior, in the
rapidity with which they were penned, in the ease with which they
flowed, in their lucidity, their profundity and sweetness to those
which I, myself saw pour from the pen of the Báb when in His
presence. Had Bahá’u’lláh no other claim to greatness, this
were sufficient, in the eyes of the world and its people, that He
produced such verses as have streamed this day from His pen.”
Foremost among the priceless treasures cast forth from the billowing
ocean of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation ranks the Kitáb-i-Íqán
(Book of Certitude), revealed within the space of two days and two
nights, in the closing years of that period (1278 A.H.–1862 A.D.).
It was written in fulfillment of the prophecy of the Báb, Who had
specifically stated that the Promised One would complete the text of
the unfinished Persian Bayán, and in reply to the questions
addressed to Bahá’u’lláh by the as yet unconverted maternal
uncle of the Báb, Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid Muḥammad, while on a
visit, with his brother, Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥasan-‘Alí, to
Karbilá. A model of Persian prose, of a style at once original,
chaste and vigorous, and remarkably lucid, both cogent in argument
and matchless in its irresistible eloquence, this Book, setting forth
in outline the Grand Redemptive Scheme of God, occupies a position
unequalled by any work in the entire range of Bahá’í literature,
except the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Bahá’u’lláh’s Most Holy Book.
Revealed on the eve of the declaration of His Mission, it proffered
to mankind the “Choice Sealed Wine,”
whose seal is of
“musk,”
and broke the “seals”
of the “Book”
referred to by Daniel, and disclosed the meaning of the “words”
destined to remain “closed up”
till the “time of the
end.”
Within a compass of two hundred pages it proclaims unequivocally the
existence and oneness of a personal God, unknowable, inaccessible,
the source of all Revelation, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and
almighty; asserts the relativity of religious truth and the
continuity of Divine Revelation; affirms the unity of the Prophets,
the universality of their Message, the identity of their fundamental
teachings, the sanctity of their scriptures, and the twofold
character of their stations; denounces the blindness and perversity
of the divines and doctors of every age; cites and elucidates the
allegorical passages of the New Testament, the abstruse verses of the
Qur’án, and the cryptic Muḥammadan traditions which have bred
those age-long misunderstandings, doubts and animosities that have
sundered and kept apart the followers of the world’s leading
religious systems; enumerates the essential prerequisites for the
attainment by every true seeker of the object of his quest;
demonstrates the validity, the sublimity and significance of the
Báb’s Revelation; acclaims the heroism and detachment of His
disciples; foreshadows, and prophesies the world-wide triumph of the
Revelation promised to the people of the Bayán; upholds the purity
and innocence of the Virgin Mary; glorifies the Imáms of the Faith
of Muḥammad; celebrates the martyrdom, and lauds the spiritual
sovereignty, of the Imám Ḥusayn; unfolds the meaning of such
symbolic terms as “Return,”
“Resurrection,”
“Seal of the Prophets”
and “Day of Judgment”
;
adumbrates and distinguishes between the three stages of Divine
Revelation; and expatiates, in glowing terms, upon the glories and
wonders of the “City of God,”
renewed, at fixed intervals,
by the dispensation of Providence, for the guidance, the benefit and
salvation of all mankind. Well may it be claimed that of all the
books revealed by the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation, this Book
alone, by sweeping away the age-long barriers that have so
insurmountably separated the great religions of the world, has laid
down a broad and unassailable foundation for the complete and
permanent reconciliation of their followers.
Next to this unique repository of inestimable treasures must rank
that marvelous collection of gem-like utterances, the “Hidden
Words” with which Bahá’u’lláh was inspired, as He paced,
wrapped in His meditations, the banks of the Tigris. Revealed in the
year 1274 A.H., partly in Persian, partly in Arabic, it was
originally designated the “Hidden Book of Fáṭimih,” and was
identified by its Author with the Book of that same name, believed by
Shí‘ah Islám to be in the possession of the promised
Qá’im, and to consist of words of consolation addressed by the
angel Gabriel, at God’s command, to Fáṭimih, and dictated to the
Imám ‘Alí, for the sole purpose of comforting her in her hour of
bitter anguish after the death of her illustrious Father. The
significance of this dynamic spiritual leaven cast into the life of
the world for the reorientation of the minds of men, the edification
of their souls and the rectification of their conduct can best be
judged by the description of its character given in the opening
passage by its Author: “This is that which hath descended from
the Realm of Glory, uttered by the tongue of power and might, and
revealed unto the Prophets of old. We have taken the inner essence
thereof and clothed it in the garment of brevity, as a token of grace
unto the righteous, that they may stand faithful unto the Covenant of
God, may fulfill in their lives His trust, and in the realm of spirit
obtain the gem of Divine virtue.”
To these two outstanding contributions to the world’s religious
literature, occupying respectively, positions of unsurpassed
preeminence among the doctrinal and ethical writings of the Author of
the Bahá’í Dispensation, was added, during that same period, a
treatise that may well be regarded as His greatest mystical
composition, designated as the “Seven Valleys,” which He wrote in
answer to the questions of Shaykh Muḥyi’d-Dín, the
Qáḍí of Khániqayn, in which He describes the seven stages
which the soul of the seeker must needs traverse ere it can attain
the object of its existence.
The “Four Valleys,” an epistle addressed to the learned Shaykh
‘Abdu’r-Raḥmán-i-Karkútí; the “Tablet of the Holy
Mariner,” in which Bahá’u’lláh prophesies the severe
afflictions that are to befall Him; the “Lawḥ-i-Ḥúríyyih”
(Tablet of the Maiden), in which events of a far remoter future are
foreshadowed; the “Súriy-i-Ṣabr” (Súrih of Patience),
revealed on the first day of Riḍván which extols Vaḥíd and his
fellow-sufferers in Nayríz; the commentary on the Letters prefixed
to the Súrihs of the Qur’án; His interpretation of the letter
Váv, mentioned in the writings of Shaykh
Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í, and of other abstruse passages in the works
of Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí; the “Lawḥ-i-Madínatu’t-Tawḥíd”
(Tablet of the City of Unity); the “Ṣaḥífiy-i-Shaṭṭíyyih”;
the “Muṣíbát-i-Ḥurúfát-i-‘Álíyát”; the
“Tafsír-i-Hú”; the “Javáhiru’l-Asrár” and a host of
other writings, in the form of epistles, odes, homilies, specific
Tablets, commentaries and prayers, contributed, each in its own way,
to swell the “rivers of everlasting life”
which poured
forth from the “Abode of Peace”
and lent a mighty impetus
to the expansion of the Báb’s Faith in both Persia and ‘Iráq,
quickening the souls and transforming the character of its adherents.
Discomfiture of the enemies of the Faith
The undeniable evidences of the range and magnificence of
Bahá’u’lláh’s rising power; His rapidly waxing prestige; the
miraculous transformation which, by precept and example, He had
effected in the outlook and character of His companions from Baghdád
to the remotest towns and hamlets in Persia; the consuming love for
Him that glowed in their bosoms; the prodigious volume of writings
that streamed day and night from His pen, could not fail to fan into
flame the animosity which smouldered in the breasts of His Shí‘ah
and Sunní enemies. Now that His residence was transferred to the
vicinity of the strongholds of Shí‘ah Islám, and He
Himself brought into direct and almost daily contact with the
fanatical pilgrims who thronged the holy places of Najaf, Karbilá
and Káẓimayn, a trial of strength between the growing brilliance
of His glory and the dark and embattled forces of religious
fanaticism could no longer be delayed. A spark was all that was
required to ignite this combustible material of all the accumulated
hatreds, fears and jealousies which the revived activities of the
Bábís had inspired. This was provided by a certain Shaykh
‘Abdu’l-Ḥusayn, a crafty and obstinate priest, whose consuming
jealousy of Bahá’u’lláh was surpassed only by his capacity to
stir up mischief both among those of high degree and also amongst the
lowest of the low, Arab or Persian, who thronged the streets and
markets of Káẓimayn, Karbilá and Baghdád. He it was whom
Bahá’u’lláh had stigmatized in His Tablets by such epithets as
the “scoundrel,”
the “schemer,”
the “wicked
one,”
who “drew the sword of his self against the face of
God,”
“in whose soul Satan hath whispered,”
and
“from whose impiety Satan flies,”
the “depraved one,”
“from whom originated and to whom will return all infidelity,
cruelty and crime.”
Largely through the efforts of the Grand
Vizir, who wished to get rid of him, this troublesome mujtahid had
been commissioned by the Sháh to proceed to Karbilá to
repair the holy sites in that city. Watching for his opportunity, he
allied himself with Mírzá Buzurg Khán, a newly-appointed
Persian consul-general, who being of the same iniquitous turn of mind
as himself, a man of mean intelligence, insincere, without foresight
or honor, and a confirmed drunkard, soon fell a prey to the influence
of that vicious plotter, and became the willing instrument of his
designs.
Their first concerted endeavor was to obtain from the governor of
Baghdád, Muṣṭafá Páshá, through a gross
distortion of the truth, an order for the extradition of Bahá’u’lláh
and His companions, an effort which miserably failed. Recognizing the
futility of any attempt to achieve his purpose through the
intervention of the local authorities, Shaykh
‘Abdu’l-Ḥusayn began, through the sedulous circulation of
dreams which he first invented and then interpreted, to excite the
passions of a superstitious and highly inflammable population. The
resentment engendered by the lack of response he met with was
aggravated by his ignominious failure to meet the challenge of an
interview pre-arranged between himself and Bahá’u’lláh. Mírzá
Buzurg Khán, on his part, used his influence in order to
arouse the animosity of the lower elements of the population against
the common Adversary, by inciting them to affront Him in public, in
the hope of provoking some rash retaliatory act that could be used as
a ground for false charges through which the desired order for
Bahá’u’lláh’s extradition might be procured. This attempt too
proved abortive, as the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, Who, despite
the warnings and pleadings of His friends, continued to walk
unescorted, both by day and by night, through the streets of the
city, was enough to plunge His would-be molesters into consternation
and shame. Well aware of their motives, He would approach them, rally
them on their intentions, joke with them, and leave them covered with
confusion and firmly resolved to abandon whatever schemes they had in
mind. The consul-general had even gone so far as to hire a ruffian, a
Turk, named Riḍá, for the sum of one hundred túmáns, provide him
with a horse and with two pistols, and order him to seek out and kill
Bahá’u’lláh, promising him that his own protection would be
fully assured. Riḍá, learning one day that his would-be-victim was
attending the public bath, eluded the vigilance of the Bábís in
attendance, entered the bath with a pistol concealed in his cloak,
and confronted Bahá’u’lláh in the inner chamber, only to
discover that he lacked the courage to accomplish his task. He
himself, years later, related that on another occasion he was lying
in wait for Bahá’u’lláh, pistol in hand, when, on Bahá’u’lláh’s
approach, he was so overcome with fear that the pistol dropped from
his hand; whereupon Bahá’u’lláh bade Áqáy-i-Kalím, who
accompanied Him, to hand it back to him, and show him the way to his
home.
Balked in his repeated attempts to achieve his malevolent purpose,
Shaykh ‘Abdu’l-Ḥusayn now diverted his energies
into a new channel. He promised his accomplice he would raise him to
the rank of a minister of the crown, if he succeeded in inducing the
government to recall Bahá’u’lláh to Ṭihrán, and cast Him
again into prison. He despatched lengthy and almost daily reports to
the immediate entourage of the Sháh. He painted extravagant
pictures of the ascendancy enjoyed by Bahá’u’lláh by
representing Him as having won the allegiance of the nomadic tribes
of ‘Iráq. He claimed that He was in a position to muster, in a
day, fully one hundred thousand men ready to take up arms at His
bidding. He accused Him of meditating, in conjunction with various
leaders in Persia, an insurrection against the sovereign. By such
means as these he succeeded in bringing sufficient pressure on the
authorities in Ṭihrán to induce the Sháh to grant him a
mandate, bestowing on him full powers, and enjoining the Persian
‘ulamás and functionaries to render him every assistance. This
mandate the Shaykh instantly forwarded to the
ecclesiastics of Najaf and Karbilá, asking them to convene a
gathering in Káẓimayn, the place of his residence. A concourse of
shaykhs, mullás and mujtahids, eager to curry favor
with the sovereign, promptly responded. Upon being informed of the
purpose for which they had been summoned, they determined to declare
a holy war against the colony of exiles, and by launching a sudden
and general assault on it to destroy the Faith at its heart. To their
amazement and disappointment, however, they found that the leading
mujtahid amongst them, the celebrated Shaykh
Murtaḍáy-i-Anṣárí, a man renowned for his tolerance, his
wisdom, his undeviating justice, his piety and nobility of character,
refused, when apprized of their designs, to pronounce the necessary
sentence against the Bábís. He it was whom Bahá’u’lláh later
extolled in the “Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán,” and numbered among “those
doctors who have indeed drunk of the cup of renunciation,”
and
“never interfered with Him,”
and to whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
referred as “the illustrious and erudite doctor, the noble and
celebrated scholar, the seal of seekers after truth.”
Pleading
insufficient knowledge of the tenets of this community, and claiming
to have witnessed no act on the part of its members at variance with
the Qur’án, he, disregarding the remonstrances of his colleagues,
abruptly left the gathering, and returned to Najaf, after having
expressed, through a messenger, his regret to Bahá’u’lláh for
what had happened, and his devout wish for His protection.
Frustrated in their designs, but unrelenting in their hostility, the
assembled divines delegated the learned and devout Ḥájí Mullá
Ḥasan-i-‘Ammú, recognized for his integrity and wisdom, to
submit various questions to Bahá’u’lláh for elucidation. When
these were submitted, and answers completely satisfactory to the
messenger were given, Ḥájí Mullá Ḥasan, affirming the
recognition by the ‘ulamás of the vastness of the knowledge of
Bahá’u’lláh, asked, as an evidence of the truth of His mission,
for a miracle that would satisfy completely all concerned. “Although
you have no right to ask this,”
Bahá’u’lláh replied, “for
God should test His creatures, and they should not test God, still I
allow and accept this request.… The ‘ulamás must assemble, and,
with one accord, choose one miracle, and write that, after the
performance of this miracle they will no longer entertain doubts
about Me, and that all will acknowledge and confess the truth of My
Cause. Let them seal this paper, and bring it to Me. This must be the
accepted criterion: if the miracle is performed, no doubt will remain
for them; and if not, We shall be convicted of imposture.”
This
clear, challenging and courageous reply, unexampled in the annals of
any religion, and addressed to the most illustrious Shí‘ah
divines, assembled in their time-honored stronghold, was so
satisfactory to their envoy that he instantly arose, kissed the knee
of Bahá’u’lláh, and departed to deliver His message. Three days
later he sent word that that august assemblage had failed to arrive
at a decision, and had chosen to drop the matter, a decision to which
he himself later gave wide publicity, in the course of his visit to
Persia, and even communicated it in person to the then Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Mírzá Sa‘íd Khán. “We have,”
Bahá’u’lláh is reported to have commented, when informed of
their reaction to this challenge, “through this all-satisfying,
all-embracing message which We sent, revealed and vindicated the
miracles of all the Prophets, inasmuch as We left the choice to the
‘ulamás themselves, undertaking to reveal whatever they would
decide upon.”
“If we carefully examine the text of the
Bible,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written concerning a
similar challenge made later by Bahá’u’lláh in the
“Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán,” “we see that the Divine Manifestation
never said to those who denied Him, ‘whatever miracle you desire, I
am ready to perform, and I will submit to whatever test you propose.’
But in the Epistle to the Sháh Bahá’u’lláh
said clearly, ‘Gather the ‘ulamás and summon Me, that the
evidences and proofs may be established.’”
Bahá’u’lláh’s departure from Baghdád
Seven years of uninterrupted, of patient and eminently successful
consolidation were now drawing to a close. A shepherdless community,
subjected to a prolonged and tremendous strain, from both within and
without, and threatened with obliteration, had been resuscitated, and
risen to an ascendancy without example in the course of its twenty
years’ history. Its foundations reinforced, its spirit exalted, its
outlook transformed, its leadership safeguarded, its fundamentals
restated, its prestige enhanced, its enemies discomfited, the Hand of
Destiny was gradually preparing to launch it on a new phase in its
checkered career, in which weal and woe alike were to carry it
through yet another stage in its evolution. The Deliverer, the sole
hope, and the virtually recognized leader of this community, Who had
consistently overawed the authors of so many plots to assassinate
Him, Who had scornfully rejected all the timid advice that He should
flee from the scene of danger, Who had firmly declined repeated and
generous offers made by friends and supporters to insure His personal
safety, Who had won so conspicuous a victory over His antagonists — He
was, at this auspicious hour, being impelled by the resistless
processes of His unfolding Mission, to transfer His residence to the
center of still greater preeminence, the capital city of the Ottoman
Empire, the seat of the Caliphate, the administrative center of Sunní
Islám, the abode of the most powerful potentate in the Islamic
world.
He had already flung a daring challenge to the sacerdotal order
represented by the eminent ecclesiastics residing in Najaf, Karbilá
and Káẓimayn. He was now, while in the vicinity of the court of
His royal adversary, to offer a similar challenge to the recognized
head of Sunní Islám, as well as to the sovereign of Persia, the
trustee of the hidden Imám. The entire company of the kings of the
earth, and in particular the Sulṭán and his ministers, were,
moreover, to be addressed by Him, appealed to and warned, while the
kings of Christendom and the Sunní hierarchy were to be severely
admonished. Little wonder that the exiled Bearer of a newly-announced
Revelation should have, in anticipation of the future splendor of the
Lamp of His Faith, after its removal from ‘Iráq, uttered these
prophetic words: “It will shine resplendently within another
globe, as predestined by Him who is the Omnipotent, the Ancient of
Days.… That the Spirit should depart out of the body of ‘Iráq is
indeed a wondrous sign unto all who are in heaven and all who are on
earth. Erelong will ye behold this Divine Youth riding upon the steed
of victory. Then will the hearts of the envious be seized with
trembling.”
The predestined hour of Bahá’u’lláh’s departure from ‘Iráq
having now struck, the process whereby it could be accomplished was
set in motion. The nine months of unremitting endeavor exerted by His
enemies, and particularly by Shaykh ‘Abdu’l-Ḥusayn
and his confederate Mírzá Buzurg Khán, were about to yield
their fruit. Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh and his ministers, on
the one hand, and the Persian Ambassador in Constantinople, on the
other, were incessantly urged to take immediate action to insure
Bahá’u’lláh’s removal from Baghdád. Through gross
misrepresentation of the true situation and the dissemination of
alarming reports a malignant and energetic enemy finally succeeded in
persuading the Sháh to instruct his foreign minister, Mírzá
Sa‘íd Khán, to direct the Persian Ambassador at the
Sublime Porte, Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán, a close friend of ‘Alí
Páshá, the Grand Vizir of the Sulṭán, and of Fu’ád
Páshá, the Minister of foreign affairs, to induce Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz to order the immediate transfer of Bahá’u’lláh
to a place remote from Baghdád, on the ground that His
continued residence in that city, adjacent to Persian territory and
close to so important a center of Shí‘ah pilgrimage,
constituted a direct menace to the security of Persia and its
government.
Mírzá Sa‘íd Khán, in his communication to the
Ambassador, stigmatized the Faith as a “misguided and detestable
sect,” deplored Bahá’u’lláh’s release from the Síyáh-Chál,
and denounced Him as one who did not cease from “secretly
corrupting and misleading foolish persons and ignorant weaklings.”
“In accordance with the royal command,” he wrote, “I, your
faithful friend, have been ordered … to instruct you to seek,
without delay, an appointment with their Excellencies, the
Ṣadr-i-A‘ẓam and the Minister of Foreign Affairs … to request
… the removal of this source of mischief from a center like
Baghdád, which is the meeting-place of many different
peoples, and is situated near the frontiers of the provinces of
Persia.” In that same letter, quoting a celebrated verse, he
writes: “‘I see beneath the ashes the glow of fire, and it wants
but little to burst into a blaze,’” thus betraying his fears and
seeking to instill them into his correspondent.
Encouraged by the presence on the throne of a monarch who had
delegated much of his powers to his ministers, and aided by certain
foreign ambassadors and ministers in Constantinople, Mírzá Ḥusayn
Khán, by dint of much persuasion and the friendly pressure he
brought to bear on these ministers, succeeded in securing the
sanction of the Sulṭán for the transfer of Bahá’u’lláh and
His companions (who had in the meantime been forced by circumstances
to change their citizenship) to Constantinople. It is even reported
that the first request the Persian authorities made of a friendly
Power, after the accession of the new Sulṭán to the throne, was
for its active and prompt intervention in this matter.
It was on the fifth of Naw-Rúz (1863), while Bahá’u’lláh was
celebrating that festival in the Mazra‘iy-i-Vashshásh,
in the outskirts of Baghdád, and had just revealed the
“Tablet of the Holy Mariner,” whose gloomy prognostications had
aroused the grave apprehensions of His Companions, that an emissary
of Námiq Páshá arrived and delivered into His hands a
communication requesting an interview between Him and the governor.
Already, as Nabíl has pointed out in his narrative, Bahá’u’lláh
had, in the course of His discourses, during the last years of His
sojourn in Baghdád, alluded to the period of trial and
turmoil that was inexorably approaching, exhibiting a sadness and
heaviness of heart which greatly perturbed those around Him. A dream
which He had at that time, the ominous character of which could not
be mistaken, served to confirm the fears and misgivings that had
assailed His companions. “I saw,”
He wrote in a Tablet,
“the Prophets and the Messengers gather and seat themselves
around Me, moaning, weeping and loudly lamenting. Amazed, I inquired
of them the reason, whereupon their lamentation and weeping waxed
greater, and they said unto me: ‘We weep for Thee, O Most Great
Mystery, O Tabernacle of Immortality!’ They wept with such a
weeping that I too wept with them. Thereupon the Concourse on high
addressed Me saying: ‘…Erelong shalt Thou behold with Thine own
eyes what no Prophet hath beheld.… Be patient, be patient.’ …
They continued addressing Me the whole night until the approach of
dawn.”
“Oceans of sorrow,” Nabíl affirms, “surged in the
hearts of the listeners when the Tablet of the Holy Mariner was read
aloud to them.… It was evident to every one that the chapter of
Baghdád was about to be closed, and a new one opened, in its
stead. No sooner had that Tablet been chanted than Bahá’u’lláh
ordered that the tents which had been pitched should be folded up,
and that all His companions should return to the city. While the
tents were being removed He observed: ‘These tents may be
likened to the trappings of this world, which no sooner are they
spread out than the time cometh for them to be rolled up.’
From
these words of His they who heard them perceived that these tents
would never again be pitched on that spot. They had not yet been
taken away when the messenger arrived from Baghdád to deliver
the afore-mentioned communication from the governor.”
By the following day the Deputy-Governor had delivered to Bahá’u’lláh
in a mosque, in the neighborhood of the governor’s house, ‘Alí
Páshá’s letter, addressed to Námiq Páshá,
couched in courteous language, inviting Bahá’u’lláh to proceed,
as a guest of the Ottoman government, to Constantinople, placing a
sum of money at His disposal, and ordering a mounted escort to
accompany Him for His protection. To this request Bahá’u’lláh
gave His ready assent, but declined to accept the sum offered Him. On
the urgent representations of the Deputy that such a refusal would
offend the authorities, He reluctantly consented to receive the
generous allowance set aside for His use, and distributed it, that
same day, among the poor.
The effect upon the colony of exiles of this sudden intelligence was
instantaneous and overwhelming. “That day,” wrote an eyewitness,
describing the reaction of the community to the news of Bahá’u’lláh’s
approaching departure, “witnessed a commotion associated with the
turmoil of the Day of Resurrection. Methinks, the very gates and
walls of the city wept aloud at their imminent separation from the
Abhá Beloved. The first night mention was made of His intended
departure His loved ones, one and all, renounced both sleep and
food.… Not a soul amongst them could be tranquillized. Many had
resolved that in the event of their being deprived of the bounty of
accompanying Him, they would, without hesitation, kill themselves.…
Gradually, however, through the words which He addressed them, and
through His exhortations and His loving-kindness, they were calmed
and resigned themselves to His good-pleasure.” For every one of
them, whether Arab or Persian, man or woman, child or adult, who
lived in Baghdád, He revealed during those days, in His own
hand, a separate Tablet. In most of these Tablets He predicted the
appearance of the “Calf”
and of the “Birds of the
Night,”
allusions to those who, as anticipated in the Tablet of
the Holy Mariner, and foreshadowed in the dream quoted above, were to
raise the standard of rebellion and precipitate the gravest crisis in
the history of the Faith.
Twenty-seven days after that mournful Tablet had been so unexpectedly
revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, and the fateful communication,
presaging His departure to Constantinople had been delivered into His
hands, on a Wednesday afternoon (April 22, 1863), thirty-one days
after Naw-Rúz, on the third of Dhi’l-Qa‘dih, 1279 A.H.,
He set forth on the first stage of His four months’ journey to the
capital of the Ottoman Empire. That historic day, forever after
designated as the first day of the Riḍván Festival, the
culmination of innumerable farewell visits which friends and
acquaintances of every class and denomination, had been paying him,
was one the like of which the inhabitants of Baghdád had
rarely beheld. A concourse of people of both sexes and of every age,
comprising friends and strangers Arabs, Kurds and Persians, notables
and clerics, officials and merchants, as well as many of the lower
classes, the poor, the orphaned, the outcast, some surprised, others
heartbroken, many tearful and apprehensive, a few impelled by
curiosity or secret satisfaction, thronged the approaches of His
house, eager to catch a final glimpse of One Who, for a decade, had,
through precept and example, exercised so potent an influence on so
large a number of the heterogeneous inhabitants of their city.
Leaving for the last time, amidst weeping and lamentation, His “Most
Holy Habitation,”
out of which had “gone forth the breath
of the All-Glorious,”
and from which had poured forth, in
“ceaseless strains,”
the “melody of the
All-Merciful,”
and dispensing on His way with a lavish hand a
last alms to the poor He had so faithfully befriended, and uttering
words of comfort to the disconsolate who besought Him on every side,
He, at length, reached the banks of the river, and was ferried
across, accompanied by His sons and amanuensis, to the Najíbíyyih
Garden, situated on the opposite shore. “O My companions,”
He thus addressed the faithful band that surrounded Him before He
embarked, “I entrust to your keeping this city of Baghdád,
in the state ye now behold it, when from the eyes of friends and
strangers alike, crowding its housetops, its streets and markets,
tears like the rain of spring are flowing down, and I depart. With
you it now rests to watch lest your deeds and conduct dim the flame
of love that gloweth within the breasts of its inhabitants.”
The muezzin had just raised the afternoon call to prayer when
Bahá’u’lláh entered the Najíbíyyih Garden, where He tarried
twelve days before His final departure from the city. There His
friends and companions, arriving in successive waves, attained His
presence and bade Him, with feelings of profound sorrow, their last
farewell. Outstanding among them was the renowned Álúsí, the Muftí
of Baghdád, who, with eyes dimmed with tears, execrated the
name of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, whom he deemed to be
primarily responsible for so unmerited a banishment. “I have ceased
to regard him,” he openly asserted, “as Náṣiri’d-Dín (the
helper of the Faith), but consider him rather to be its wrecker.”
Another distinguished visitor was the governor himself, Námiq Páshá,
who, after expressing in the most respectful terms his regret at the
developments which had precipitated Bahá’u’lláh’s departure,
and assuring Him of his readiness to aid Him in any way he could,
handed to the officer appointed to accompany Him a written order,
commanding the governors of the provinces through which the exiles
would be passing to extend to them the utmost consideration.
“Whatever you require,” he, after profuse apologies, informed
Bahá’u’lláh, “you have but to command. We are ready to carry
it out.” “Extend thy consideration to Our loved ones,”
was the reply to his insistent and reiterated offers, “and deal
with them with kindness”
— a request to which he gave his warm
and unhesitating assent.
Small wonder that, in the face of so many evidences of deep-seated
devotion, sympathy and esteem, so strikingly manifested by high and
low alike, from the time Bahá’u’lláh announced His contemplated
journey to the day of His departure from the Najíbíyyih
Garden — small wonder that those who had so tirelessly sought to
secure the order for His banishment, and had rejoiced at the success
of their efforts, should now have bitterly regretted their act. “Such
hath been the interposition of God,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
in a letter written by Him from that garden, with reference to these
enemies, affirms, “that the joy evinced by them hath been turned
to chagrin and sorrow, so much so that the Persian consul-general in
Baghdád regrets exceedingly the plans and plots
the schemers had devised. Námiq Páshá
himself, on the day he called on Him (Bahá’u’lláh)
stated: ‘Formerly they insisted upon your departure. Now, however,
they are even more insistent that you should remain.’”
The arrival of Bahá’u’lláh in the Najíbíyyih Garden,
subsequently designated by His followers the Garden of Riḍván,
signalizes the commencement of what has come to be recognized as the
holiest and most significant of all Bahá’í festivals, the
festival commemorating the Declaration of His Mission to His
companions. So momentous a Declaration may well be regarded both as
the logical consummation of that revolutionizing process which was
initiated by Himself upon His return from Sulaymáníyyih, and as a
prelude to the final proclamation of that same Mission to the world
and its rulers from Adrianople.
Through that solemn act the “delay,”
of no less than a
decade, divinely interposed between the birth of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Revelation in the Síyáh-Chál and its announcement to the
Báb’s disciples, was at long last terminated. The “set time
of concealment,”
during which as He Himself has borne witness,
the “signs and tokens of a divinely-appointed Revelation”
were being showered upon Him, was fulfilled. The “myriad veils
of light,”
within which His glory had been wrapped, were, at
that historic hour, partially lifted, vouchsafing to mankind “an
infinitesimal glimmer”
of the effulgence of His “peerless,
His most sacred and exalted Countenance.”
The “thousand
two hundred and ninety days,”
fixed by Daniel in the last
chapter of His Book, as the duration of the “abomination that
maketh desolate”
had now elapsed. The “hundred lunar
years,”
destined to immediately precede that blissful
consummation (1335 days), announced by Daniel in that same chapter,
had commenced. The nineteen years, constituting the first “Váḥid,”
preordained in the Persian Bayán by the pen of the Báb, had been
completed. The Lord of the Kingdom, Jesus Christ returned in the
glory of the Father, was about to ascend His throne, and assume the
sceptre of a world-embracing, indestructible sovereignty. The
community of the Most Great Name, the “companions of the Crimson
Colored Ark,”
lauded in glowing terms in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’,
had visibly emerged. The Báb’s own prophecy regarding the
“Riḍván,”
the scene of the unveiling of Bahá’u’lláh’s
transcendent glory, had been literally fulfilled.
Undaunted by the prospect of the appalling adversities which, as
predicted by Himself, were soon to overtake Him; on the eve of a
second banishment which would be fraught with many hazards and
perils, and would bring Him still farther from His native land, the
cradle of His Faith, to a country alien in race, in language and in
culture; acutely conscious of the extension of the circle of His
adversaries, among whom were soon to be numbered a monarch more
despotic than Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, and ministers no less
unyielding in their hostility than either Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí
or the Amír-Niẓám; undeterred by the perpetual interruptions
occasioned by the influx of a host of visitors who thronged His tent,
Bahá’u’lláh chose in that critical and seemingly unpropitious
hour to advance so challenging a claim, to lay bare the mystery
surrounding His person, and to assume, in their plenitude, the power
and the authority which were the exclusive privileges of the One
Whose advent the Báb had prophesied.
Already the shadow of that great oncoming event had fallen upon the
colony of exiles, who awaited expectantly its consummation. As the
year “eighty”
steadily and inexorably approached, He Who
had become the real leader of that community increasingly
experienced, and progressively communicated to His future followers,
the onrushing influences of its informing force. The festive, the
soul-entrancing odes which He revealed almost every day; the Tablets,
replete with hints, which streamed from His pen; the allusions which,
in private converse and public discourse, He made to the approaching
hour; the exaltation which in moments of joy and sadness alike
flooded His soul; the ecstasy which filled His lovers, already
enraptured by the multiplying evidences of His rising greatness and
glory; the perceptible change noted in His demeanor; and finally, His
adoption of the táj (tall felt head-dress), on the day of His
departure from His Most Holy House — all proclaimed unmistakably His
imminent assumption of the prophetic office and of His open
leadership of the community of the Báb’s followers.
“Many a night,” writes Nabíl, depicting the tumult that had
seized the hearts of Bahá’u’lláh’s companions, in the days
prior to the declaration of His mission, “would Mírzá Áqá Ján
gather them together in his room, close the door, light numerous
camphorated candles, and chant aloud to them the newly revealed odes
and Tablets in his possession. Wholly oblivious of this contingent
world, completely immersed in the realms of the spirit, forgetful of
the necessity for food, sleep or drink, they would suddenly discover
that night had become day, and that the sun was approaching its
zenith.”
Of the exact circumstances attending that epoch-making Declaration
we, alas, are but scantily informed. The words Bahá’u’lláh
actually uttered on that occasion, the manner of His Declaration, the
reaction it produced, its impact on Mírzá Yaḥyá, the identity of
those who were privileged to hear Him, are shrouded in an obscurity
which future historians will find it difficult to penetrate. The
fragmentary description left to posterity by His chronicler Nabíl is
one of the very few authentic records we possess of the memorable
days He spent in that garden. “Every day,” Nabíl has related,
“ere the hour of dawn, the gardeners would pick the roses which
lined the four avenues of the garden, and would pile them in the
center of the floor of His blessed tent. So great would be the heap
that when His companions gathered to drink their morning tea in His
presence, they would be unable to see each other across it. All these
roses Bahá’u’lláh would, with His own hands, entrust to those
whom He dismissed from His presence every morning to be delivered, on
His behalf, to His Arab and Persian friends in the city.” “One
night,” he continues, “the ninth night of the waxing moon, I
happened to be one of those who watched beside His blessed tent. As
the hour of midnight approached, I saw Him issue from His tent, pass
by the places where some of His companions were sleeping, and begin
to pace up and down the moonlit, flower-bordered avenues of the
garden. So loud was the singing of the nightingales on every side
that only those who were near Him could hear distinctly His voice. He
continued to walk until, pausing in the midst of one of these
avenues, He observed: ‘Consider these nightingales. So great is
their love for these roses, that sleepless from dusk till dawn, they
warble their melodies and commune with burning passion with the
object of their adoration. How then can those who claim to be afire
with the rose-like beauty of the Beloved choose to sleep?’ For
three successive nights I watched and circled round His blessed tent.
Every time I passed by the couch whereon He lay, I would find Him
wakeful, and every day, from morn till eventide, I would see Him
ceaselessly engaged in conversing with the stream of visitors who
kept flowing in from Baghdád. Not once could I discover in
the words He spoke any trace of dissimulation.”
Significance of His Declaration
As to the significance of that Declaration let Bahá’u’lláh
Himself reveal to us its import. Acclaiming that historic occasion as
the “Most Great Festival,”
the “King of Festivals,”
the “Festival of God,”
He has, in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas,
characterized it as the Day whereon “all created things were
immersed in the sea of purification,”
whilst in one of His
specific Tablets, He has referred to it as the Day whereon “the
breezes of forgiveness were wafted over the entire creation.”
“Rejoice, with exceeding gladness, O people of Bahá!”
,
He, in another Tablet, has written, “as ye call to remembrance
the Day of supreme felicity, the Day whereon the Tongue of the
Ancient of Days hath spoken, as He departed from His House proceeding
to the Spot from which He shed upon the whole of creation the
splendors of His Name, the All-Merciful … Were We to reveal the
hidden secrets of that Day, all that dwell on earth and in the
heavens would swoon away and die, except such as will be preserved by
God, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. Such is the
inebriating effect of the words of God upon the Revealer of His
undoubted proofs that His pen can move no longer.”
And again:
“The Divine Springtime is come, O Most Exalted Pen, for the
Festival of the All-Merciful is fast approaching.… The Day-Star of
Blissfulness shineth above the horizon of Our Name, the Blissful,
inasmuch as the Kingdom of the Name of God hath been adorned with the
ornament of the Name of Thy Lord, the Creator of the heavens.… Take
heed lest anything deter Thee from extolling the greatness of this
Day — the Day whereon the Finger of Majesty and Power hath opened the
seal of the Wine of Reunion, and called all who are in the heavens
and all who are on earth.… This is the Day whereon the unseen world
crieth out: ‘Great is thy blessedness, O earth, for thou hast been
made the footstool of thy God, and been chosen as the seat of His
mighty throne’ … Say … He it is Who hath laid bare before you
the hidden and treasured Gem, were ye to seek it. He it is who is the
One Beloved of all things, whether of the past or of the future.”
And yet again: “Arise, and proclaim unto the entire creation the
tidings that He who is the All-Merciful hath directed His steps
towards the Riḍván and entered it. Guide, then, the people unto
the Garden of Delight which God hath made the Throne of His Paradise
… Within this Paradise, and from the heights of its loftiest
chambers, the Maids of Heaven have cried out and shouted: ‘Rejoice,
ye dwellers of the realms above, for the fingers of Him Who is the
Ancient of Days are ringing, in the name of the All-Glorious, the
Most Great Bell, in the midmost heart of the heavens. The hands of
bounty have borne round the cups of everlasting life. Approach, and
quaff your fill.’”
And finally: “Forget the world of
creation, O Pen, and turn Thou towards the face of Thy Lord, the Lord
of all names. Adorn, then, the world with the ornament of the favors
of Thy Lord, the King of everlasting days. For We perceive the
fragrance of the Day whereon He Who is the Desire of all nations hath
shed upon the kingdoms of the unseen and of the seen the splendors of
the light of His most excellent names, and enveloped them with the
radiance of the luminaries of His most gracious favors, favors which
none can reckon except Him Who is the Omnipotent Protector of the
entire creation.”
His departure from the Garden of Riḍván
The departure of Bahá’u’lláh from the Garden of Riḍván, at
noon, on the 14th of Dhi’l-Qa‘dih 1279 A.H. (May 3, 1863),
witnessed scenes of tumultuous enthusiasm no less spectacular, and
even more touching, than those which greeted Him when leaving His
Most Great House in Baghdád. “The great tumult,” wrote an
eyewitness, “associated in our minds with the Day of Gathering, the
Day of Judgment, we beheld on that occasion. Believers and
unbelievers alike sobbed and lamented. The chiefs and notables who
had congregated were struck with wonder. Emotions were stirred to
such depths as no tongue can describe, nor could any observer escape
their contagion.”
Mounted on His steed, a red roan stallion of the finest breed, the
best His lovers could purchase for Him, and leaving behind Him a
bowing multitude of fervent admirers, He rode forth on the first
stage of a journey that was to carry Him to the city of
Constantinople. “Numerous were the heads,” Nabíl himself a
witness of that memorable scene, recounts, “which, on every side,
bowed to the dust at the feet of His horse, and kissed its hoofs, and
countless were those who pressed forward to embrace His stirrups.”
“How great the number of those embodiments of fidelity,”
testifies a fellow-traveler, “who, casting themselves before that
charger, preferred death to separation from their Beloved! Methinks,
that blessed steed trod upon the bodies of those pure-hearted souls.”
“He (God) it was,”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself
declares, “Who enabled Me to depart out of the city (Baghdád),
clothed with such majesty as none, except the denier and the
malicious, can fail to acknowledge.”
These marks of homage and
devotion continued to surround Him until He was installed in
Constantinople. Mírzá Yaḥyá, while hurrying on foot, by his own
choice, behind Bahá’u’lláh’s carriage, on the day of His
arrival in that city, was overheard by Nabíl to remark to Siyyid
Muḥammad: “Had I not chosen to hide myself, had I revealed my
identity, the honor accorded Him (Bahá’u’lláh) on this day
would have been mine too.”
Incidents connected with His journey
The same tokens of devotion shown Bahá’u’lláh at the time of
His departure from His House, and later from the Garden of Riḍván,
were repeated when, on the 20th of Dhi’l-Qa‘dih (May 9,
1863), accompanied by members of His family and twenty-six of His
disciples, He left Firayját, His first stopping-place in the course
of that journey. A caravan, consisting of fifty mules, a mounted
guard of ten soldiers with their officer, and seven pairs of howdahs,
each pair surmounted by four parasols, was formed, and wended its
way, by easy stages, and in the space of no less than a hundred and
ten days, across the uplands, and through the defiles, the woods,
valleys and pastures, comprising the picturesque scenery of eastern
Anatolia, to the port of Sámsún, on the Black Sea. At times on
horseback, at times resting in the howdah reserved for His use, and
which was oftentimes surrounded by His companions, most of whom were
on foot, He, by virtue of the written order of Námiq Páshá,
was accorded, as He traveled northward, in the path of spring, an
enthusiastic reception by the válís, the mutiṣarrifs, the
qá’im-maqáms, the mudírs, the shaykhs, the muftís
and qáḍís, the government officials and notables belonging to the
districts through which He passed. In Karkúk, in Irbíl, in Mosul,
where He tarried three days, in Níṣíbín, in Márdín, in
Díyár-Bakr, where a halt of a couple of days was made, in Khárpút,
in Sívas, as well as in other villages and hamlets, He would be met
by a delegation immediately before His arrival, and would be
accompanied, for some distance, by a similar delegation upon His
departure. The festivities which, at some stations, were held in His
honor, the food the villagers prepared and brought for His
acceptance, the eagerness which time and again they exhibited in
providing the means for His comfort, recalled the reverence which the
people of Baghdád had shown Him on so many occasions.
“As we passed that morning through the town of Márdín,” that
same fellow-traveler relates, “we were preceded by a mounted escort
of government soldiers, carrying their banners, and beating their
drums in welcome. The mutiṣarrif, together with officials and
notables, accompanied us, while men, women and children, crowding the
housetops and filling the streets, awaited our arrival. With dignity
and pomp we traversed that town, and resumed our journey, the
mutiṣarrif and those with him escorting us for a considerable
distance.” “According to the unanimous testimony of those we met
in the course of that journey,” Nabíl has recorded in his
narrative, “never before had they witnessed along this route, over
which governors and mushírs continually passed back and forth
between Constantinople and Baghdád, any one travel in such
state, dispense such hospitality to all, and accord to each so great
a share of his bounty.” Sighting from His howdah the Black Sea, as
He approached the port of Sámsún, Bahá’u’lláh, at the request
of Mírzá Áqá Ján, revealed a Tablet, designated Lawḥ-i-Hawdaj
(Tablet of the Howdah), which by such allusions as the “Divine
Touchstone,”
“the grievous and tormenting Mischief,”
reaffirmed and supplemented the dire predictions recorded in the
recently revealed Tablet of the Holy Mariner.
In Sámsún the Chief Inspector of the entire province, extending
from Baghdád to Constantinople, accompanied by several
páshás, called on Him, showed Him the utmost respect, and
was entertained by Him at luncheon. But seven days after His arrival,
He, as foreshadowed in the Tablet of the Holy Mariner, was put on
board a Turkish steamer and three days later was disembarked, at
noon, together with His fellow-exiles, at the port of Constantinople,
on the first of Rabí‘u’l-Avval 1280 A.H. (August 16, 1863). In
two special carriages, which awaited Him at the landing-stage He and
His family drove to the house of Shamsí Big, the official who
had been appointed by the government to entertain its guests, and who
lived in the vicinity of the Khirqiy-i-Sharíf mosque.
Later they were transferred to the more commodious house of Vísí
Páshá, in the neighborhood of the mosque of Sulṭán
Muḥammad.
His sojourn in Constantinople
With the arrival of Bahá’u’lláh at Constantinople, the capital
of the Ottoman Empire and seat of the Caliphate (acclaimed by the
Muḥammadans as “the Dome of Islám,”
but stigmatized by
Him as the spot whereon the “throne of tyranny”
had been
established) the grimmest and most calamitous and yet the most
glorious chapter in the history of the first Bahá’í century may
be said to have opened. A period in which untold privations and
unprecedented trials were mingled with the noblest spiritual triumphs
was now commencing. The day-star of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry
was about to reach its zenith. The most momentous years of the Heroic
Age of His Dispensation were at hand. The catastrophic process,
foreshadowed as far back as the year sixty by His Forerunner in the
Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, was beginning to be set in motion.
Exactly two decades earlier the Bábí Revelation had been born in
darkest Persia, in the city of Shíráz. Despite the cruel
captivity to which its Author had been subjected, the stupendous
claims He had voiced had been proclaimed by Him before a
distinguished assemblage in Tabríz, the capital of Ádhirbáyján.
In the hamlet of Badasht the Dispensation which His Faith had
ushered in had been fearlessly inaugurated by the champions of His
Cause. In the midst of the hopelessness and agony of the Síyáh-Chál
of Ṭihrán, nine years later, that Revelation had, swiftly and
mysteriously been brought to sudden fruition. The process of rapid
deterioration in the fortunes of that Faith, which had gradually set
in, and was alarmingly accelerated during the years of Bahá’u’lláh’s
withdrawal to Kurdistán, had, in a masterly fashion after His return
from Sulaymáníyyih, been arrested and reversed. The ethical, the
moral and doctrinal foundations of a nascent community had been
subsequently, in the course of His sojourn in Baghdád,
unassailably established. And finally, in the Garden of Riḍván, on
the eve of His banishment to Constantinople, the ten-year delay,
ordained by an inscrutable Providence, had been terminated through
the Declaration of His Mission and the visible emergence of what was
to become the nucleus of a world-embracing Fellowship. What now
remained to be achieved was the proclamation, in the city of
Adrianople, of that same Mission to the world’s secular and
ecclesiastical leaders, to be followed, in successive decades, by a
further unfoldment, in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká, of the
principles and precepts constituting the bedrock of that Faith, by
the formulation of the laws and ordinances designed to safeguard its
integrity, by the establishment, immediately after His ascension, of
the Covenant designed to preserve its unity and perpetuate its
influence, by the prodigious and world-wide extension of its
activities, under the guidance of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center
of that Covenant, and lastly, by the rise, in the Formative Age of
that Faith, of its Administrative Order, the harbinger of its Golden
Age and future glory.
This historic Proclamation was made at a time when the Faith was in
the throes of a crisis of extreme violence, and it was in the main
addressed to the kings of the earth, and to the Christian and Muslim
ecclesiastical leaders who, by virtue of their immense prestige,
ascendancy and authority, assumed an appalling and inescapable
responsibility for the immediate destinies of their subjects and
followers.
The initial phase of that Proclamation may be said to have opened in
Constantinople with the communication (the text of which we, alas, do
not possess) addressed by Bahá’u’lláh to Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz himself, the self-styled vicar of the Prophet of
Islám and the absolute ruler of a mighty empire. So potent, so
august a personage was the first among the sovereigns of the world to
receive the Divine Summons, and the first among Oriental monarchs to
sustain the impact of God’s retributive justice. The occasion for
this communication was provided by the infamous edict the Sulṭán
had promulgated, less than four months after the arrival of the
exiles in his capital, banishing them, suddenly and without any
justification whatsoever, in the depth of winter, and in the most
humiliating circumstances, to Adrianople, situated on the extremities
of his empire.
That fateful and ignominious decision, arrived at by the Sulṭán
and his chief ministers, ‘Alí Páshá and Fu’ád Páshá,
was in no small degree attributable to the persistent intrigues of
the Mushíru’d-Dawlih, Mírzá Ḥusayn Khán, the
Persian Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, denounced by Bahá’u’lláh
as His “calumniator,”
who awaited the first opportunity to
strike at Him and the Cause of which He was now the avowed and
recognized leader. This Ambassador was pressed continually by his
government to persist in the policy of arousing against Bahá’u’lláh
the hostility of the Turkish authorities. He was encouraged by the
refusal of Bahá’u’lláh to follow the invariable practice of
government guests, however highly placed, of calling in person, upon
their arrival at the capital, on the Shaykhu’l-Islám,
on the Ṣadr-i-A‘ẓam, and on the Foreign Minister — Bahá’u’lláh
did not even return the calls paid Him by several ministers, by Kamál
Páshá and by a former Turkish envoy to the court of Persia.
He was not deterred by Bahá’u’lláh’s upright and independent
attitude which contrasted so sharply with the mercenariness of the
Persian princes who were wont, on their arrival, to “solicit at
every door such allowances and gifts as they might obtain.” He
resented Bahá’u’lláh’s unwillingness to present Himself at
the Persian Embassy, and to repay the visit of its representative;
and, being seconded, in his efforts, by his accomplice, Ḥájí
Mírzá Ḥasan-i-Ṣafá, whom he instructed to circulate unfounded
reports about Him, he succeeded through his official influence, as
well as through his private intercourse with ecclesiastics, notables
and government officials, in representing Bahá’u’lláh as a
proud and arrogant person, Who regarded Himself as subject to no law,
Who entertained designs inimical to all established authority, and
Whose forwardness had precipitated the grave differences that had
arisen between Himself and the Persian Government. Nor was he the
only one who indulged in these nefarious schemes. Others, according
to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “condemned and vilified”
the
exiles, as “a mischief to all the world,”
as “destructive
of treaties and covenants,”
as “baleful to all lands”
and as “deserving of every chastisement and punishment.”
No less a personage than the highly-respected brother-in-law of the
Ṣadr-i-A‘ẓam was commissioned to apprize the Captive of the
edict pronounced against Him — an edict which evinced a virtual
coalition of the Turkish and Persian imperial governments against a
common adversary, and which in the end brought such tragic
consequences upon the Sultanate, the Caliphate and the Qájár
dynasty. Refused an audience by Bahá’u’lláh that envoy had to
content himself with a presentation of his puerile observations and
trivial arguments to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Áqáy-i-Kalím, who
were delegated to see him, and whom he informed that, after three
days, he would return to receive the answer to the order he had been
bidden to transmit.
That same day a Tablet, severely condemnatory in tone, was revealed
by Bahá’u’lláh, was entrusted by Him, in a sealed envelope, on
the following morning, to Shamsí Big, who was instructed to
deliver it into the hands of ‘Alí Páshá, and to say that
it was sent down from God. “I know not what that letter contained,”
Shamsí Big subsequently informed Áqáy-i-Kalím, “for no
sooner had the Grand Vizir perused it than he turned the color of a
corpse, and remarked: ‘It is as if the King of Kings were issuing
his behest to his humblest vassal king and regulating his conduct.’
So grievous was his condition that I backed out of his presence.”
“Whatever action,”
Bahá’u’lláh, commenting on the
effect that Tablet had produced, is reported to have stated, “the
ministers of the Sulṭán took against Us, after having become
acquainted with its contents, cannot be regarded as unjustifiable.
The acts they committed before its perusal, however, can have no
justification.”
That Tablet, according to Nabíl, was of considerable length, opened
with words directed to the sovereign himself, severely censured his
ministers, exposed their immaturity and incompetence, and included
passages in which the ministers themselves were addressed, in which
they were boldly challenged, and sternly admonished not to pride
themselves on their worldly possessions, nor foolishly seek the
riches of which time would inexorably rob them.
Bahá’u’lláh was on the eve of His departure, which followed
almost immediately upon the promulgation of the edict of His
banishment, when, in a last and memorable interview with the
aforementioned Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥasan-i-Ṣafá, He sent the
following message to the Persian Ambassador: “What did it profit
thee, and such as are like thee, to slay, year after year, so many of
the oppressed, and to inflict upon them manifold afflictions, when
they have increased a hundredfold, and ye find yourselves in complete
bewilderment, knowing not how to relieve your minds of this
oppressive thought.… His Cause transcends any and every plan ye
devise. Know this much: Were all the governments on earth to unite
and take My life and the lives of all who bear this Name, this Divine
Fire would never be quenched. His Cause will rather encompass all the
kings of the earth, nay all that hath been created from water and
clay.… Whatever may yet befall Us, great shall be our gain, and
manifest the loss wherewith they shall be afflicted.”
Pursuant to the peremptory orders issued for the immediate departure
of the already twice banished exiles, Bahá’u’lláh, His family,
and His companions, some riding in wagons, others mounted on pack
animals, with their belongings piled in carts drawn by oxen, set out,
accompanied by Turkish officers, on a cold December morning, amidst
the weeping of the friends they were leaving behind, on their
twelve-day journey, across a bleak and windswept country, to a city
characterized by Bahá’u’lláh as “the place which none
entereth except such as have rebelled against the authority of the
sovereign.”
“They expelled Us,”
is His own testimony
in the Súriy-i-Mulúk, “from thy city (Constantinople)
with an abasement with which no abasement on earth can compare.”
“Neither My family, nor those who accompanied Me,”
He
further states, “had the necessary raiment to protect them from
the cold in that freezing weather.”
And again: “The eyes
of Our enemies wept over Us, and beyond them those of every
discerning person.”
“A banishment,” laments Nabíl,
“endured with such meekness that the pen sheddeth tears when
recounting it, and the page is ashamed to bear its description.” “A
cold of such intensity,” that same chronicler records, “prevailed
that year, that nonagenarians could not recall its like. In some
regions, in both Turkey and Persia, animals succumbed to its severity
and perished in the snows. The upper reaches of the Euphrates, in
Ma‘dan-Nuqrih, were covered with ice for several day — an
unprecedented phenomenon — while in Díyár-Bakr the river froze over
for no less than forty days.” “To obtain water from the springs,”
one of the exiles of Adrianople recounts, “a great fire had to be
lighted in their immediate neighborhood, and kept burning for a
couple of hours before they thawed out.”
Traveling through rain and storm, at times even making night marches,
the weary travelers, after brief halts at Kúchik-Chakmachih,
Búyúk-Chakmachih, Salvarí, Birkás, and Bábá-Ískí,
arrived at their destination, on the first of Rajab 1280 A.H.
(December 12, 1863), and were lodged in the Khán-i-‘Arab, a
two-story caravanserai, near the house of ‘Izzat-Áqá. Three days
later, Bahá’u’lláh and His family were consigned to a house
suitable only for summer habitation, in the Murádíyyih quarter,
near the Takyiy-i-Mawlaví, and were moved again, after a week, to
another house, in the vicinity of a mosque in that same neighborhood.
About six months later they transferred to more commodious quarters,
known as the house of Amru’lláh (House of God’s command)
situated on the northern side of the mosque of Sulṭán Salím.
Thus closes the opening scene of one of the most dramatic episodes in
the ministry of Bahá’u’lláh. The curtain now rises on what is
admittedly the most turbulent and critical period of the first Bahá’í
century — a period that was destined to precede the most glorious
phase of that ministry, the proclamation of His Message to the world
and its rulers.
A twenty-year-old Faith had just begun to recover from a series of
successive blows when a crisis of the first magnitude overtook it and
shook it to its roots. Neither the tragic martyrdom of the Báb nor
the ignominious attempt on the life of the sovereign, nor its bloody
aftermath, nor Bahá’u’lláh’s humiliating banishment from His
native land, nor even His two-year withdrawal to Kurdistán,
devastating though they were in their consequences, could compare in
gravity with this first major internal convulsion which seized a
newly rearisen community, and which threatened to cause an
irreparable breach in the ranks of its members. More odious than the
unrelenting hostility which Abú-Jahl, the relative of Muḥammad,
had exhibited, more shameful than the betrayal of Jesus Christ by His
disciple, Judas Iscariot, more perfidious than the conduct of the
sons of Jacob towards Joseph their brother, more abhorrent than the
deed committed by one of the sons of Noah, more infamous than even
the criminal act perpetrated by Cain against Abel, the monstrous
behavior of Mírzá Yaḥyá, one of the half-brothers of
Bahá’u’lláh, the nominee of the Báb, and recognized chief of
the Bábí community, brought in its wake a period of travail which
left its mark on the fortunes of the Faith for no less than half a
century. This supreme crisis Bahá’u’lláh Himself designated as
the Ayyám-i-Shidád (Days of Stress), during which “the
most grievous veil”
was torn asunder, and the “most great
separation”
was irrevocably effected. It immensely gratified
and emboldened its external enemies, both civil and ecclesiastical,
played into their hands, and evoked their unconcealed derision. It
perplexed and confused the friends and supporters of Bahá’u’lláh,
and seriously damaged the prestige of the Faith in the eyes of its
western admirers. It had been brewing ever since the early days of
Bahá’u’lláh’s sojourn in Baghdád, was temporarily
suppressed by the creative forces which, under His as yet
unproclaimed leadership, reanimated a disintegrating community, and
finally broke out, in all its violence, in the years immediately
preceding the proclamation of His Message. It brought incalculable
sorrow to Bahá’u’lláh, visibly aged Him, and inflicted, through
its repercussions, the heaviest blow ever sustained by Him in His
lifetime. It was engineered throughout by the tortuous intrigues and
incessant machinations of that same diabolical Siyyid Muḥammad,
that vile whisperer who, disregarding Bahá’u’lláh’s advice,
had insisted on accompanying Him to Constantinople and Adrianople,
and was now redoubling his efforts, with unrelaxing vigilance, to
bring it to a head.
Mírzá Yaḥyá had, ever since the return of Bahá’u’lláh from
Sulaymáníyyih, either chosen to maintain himself in an inglorious
seclusion in his own house, or had withdrawn, whenever danger
threatened, to such places of safety as Ḥillih and Basra. To the
latter town he had fled, disguised as a Baghdád Jew, and
become a shoe merchant. So great was his terror that he is reported
to have said on one occasion: “Whoever claims to have seen me, or
to have heard my voice, I pronounce an infidel.” On being informed
of Bahá’u’lláh’s impending departure for Constantinople, he
at first hid himself in the garden of Huvaydar, in the vicinity of
Baghdád, meditating meanwhile on the advisability of fleeing
either to Abyssinia, India or some other country. Refusing to heed
Bahá’u’lláh’s advice to proceed to Persia, and there
disseminate the writings of the Báb, he sent a certain Ḥájí
Muḥammad Káẓim, who resembled him, to the government-house to
procure for him a passport in the name of Mírzá
‘Alíy-i-Kirmánsháhí, and left Baghdád,
abandoning the writings there, and proceeded in disguise, accompanied
by an Arab Bábí, named Ẓáhir, to Mosul, where he joined the
exiles who were on their way to Constantinople.
A constant witness of the ever deepening attachment of the exiles to
Bahá’u’lláh and of their amazing veneration for Him; fully
aware of the heights to which his Brother’s popularity had risen in
Baghdád, in the course of His journey to Constantinople, and
later through His association with the notables and governors of
Adrianople; incensed by the manifold evidences of the courage, the
dignity, and independence which that Brother had demonstrated in His
dealings with the authorities in the capital; provoked by the
numerous Tablets which the Author of a newly-established Dispensation
had been ceaselessly revealing; allowing himself to be duped by the
enticing prospects of unfettered leadership held out to him by Siyyid
Muḥammad, the Antichrist of the Bahá’í Revelation, even as
Muḥammad Sháh had been misled by the Antichrist of the Bábí
Revelation, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí; refusing to be admonished by
prominent members of the community who advised him, in writing, to
exercise wisdom and restraint; forgetful of the kindness and counsels
of Bahá’u’lláh, who, thirteen years his senior, had watched
over his early youth and manhood; emboldened by the sin-covering eye
of his Brother, Who, on so many occasions, had drawn a veil over his
many crimes and follies, this arch-breaker of the Covenant of the
Báb, spurred on by his mounting jealousy and impelled by his
passionate love of leadership, was driven to perpetrate such acts as
defied either concealment or toleration.
Irremediably corrupted through his constant association with Siyyid
Muḥammad, that living embodiment of wickedness, cupidity and
deceit, he had already in the absence of Bahá’u’lláh from
Baghdád, and even after His return from Sulaymáníyyih,
stained the annals of the Faith with acts of indelible infamy. His
corruption, in scores of instances, of the text of the Báb’s
writings; the blasphemous addition he made to the formula of the
adhán by the introduction of a passage in which he identified
himself with the Godhead; his insertion of references in those
writings to a succession in which he nominated himself and his
descendants as heirs of the Báb; the vacillation and apathy he had
betrayed when informed of the tragic death which his Master had
suffered; his condemnation to death of all the Mirrors of the Bábí
Dispensation, though he himself was one of those Mirrors; his
dastardly act in causing the murder of Dayyán, whom he feared and
envied; his foul deed in bringing about, during the absence of
Bahá’u’lláh from Baghdád, the assassination of Mírzá
‘Alí-Akbar, the Báb’s cousin; and, most heinous of all, his
unspeakably repugnant violation, during that same period, of the
honor of the Báb Himself — all these, as attested by Áqáy-i-Kalím,
and reported by Nabíl in his Narrative, were to be thrown into a yet
more lurid light by further acts the perpetration of which were to
seal irretrievably his doom.
Desperate designs to poison Bahá’u’lláh and His companions, and
thereby reanimate his own defunct leadership, began, approximately a
year after their arrival in Adrianople, to agitate his mind. Well
aware of the erudition of his half-brother, Áqáy-i-Kalím, in
matters pertaining to medicine, he, under various pretexts, sought
enlightenment from him regarding the effects of certain herbs and
poisons, and then began, contrary to his wont, to invite Bahá’u’lláh
to his home, where, one day, having smeared His tea-cup with a
substance he had concocted, he succeeded in poisoning Him
sufficiently to produce a serious illness which lasted no less than a
month, and which was accompanied by severe pains and high fever, the
aftermath of which left Bahá’u’lláh with a shaking hand till
the end of His life. So grave was His condition that a foreign
doctor, named Shíshmán, was called in to attend Him.
The doctor was so appalled by His livid hue that he deemed His case
hopeless, and, after having fallen at His feet, retired from His
presence without prescribing a remedy. A few days later that doctor
fell ill and died. Prior to his death Bahá’u’lláh had intimated
that doctor Shíshmán had sacrificed his life for Him.
To Mírzá Áqá Ján, sent by Bahá’u’lláh to visit him, the
doctor had stated that God had answered his prayers, and that after
his death a certain Dr. Chúpán, whom he knew to be reliable,
should, whenever necessary, be called in his stead.
On another occasion this same Mírzá Yaḥyá had, according to the
testimony of one of his wives, who had temporarily deserted him and
revealed the details of the above-mentioned act, poisoned the well
which provided water for the family and companions of Bahá’u’lláh,
in consequence of which the exiles manifested strange symptoms of
illness. He even had, gradually and with great circumspection,
disclosed to one of the companions, Ustád Muḥammad-‘Alíy-i-Salmání,
the barber, on whom he had lavished great marks of favor, his wish
that he, on some propitious occasion, when attending Bahá’u’lláh
in His bath, should assassinate Him. “So enraged was Ustád
Muḥammad-‘Alí,” Áqáy-i-Kalím, recounting this episode to
Nabíl in Adrianople, has stated, “when apprized of this
proposition, that he felt a strong desire to kill Mírzá Yaḥyá on
the spot, and would have done so but for his fear of Bahá’u’lláh’s
displeasure. I happened to be the first person he encountered as he
came out of the bath weeping.… I eventually succeeded, after much
persuasion, in inducing him to return to the bath and complete his
unfinished task.” Though ordered subsequently by Bahá’u’lláh
not to divulge this occurrence to any one, the barber was unable to
hold his peace and betrayed the secret, plunging thereby the
community into great consternation. “When the secret nursed in
his (Mírzá Yaḥyá) bosom was revealed by God,”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself affirms, “he disclaimed such an
intention, and imputed it to that same servant (Ustád
Muḥammad-‘Alí).”
The moment had now arrived for Him Who had so recently, both verbally
and in numerous Tablets, revealed the implications of the claims He
had advanced, to acquaint formally the one who was the nominee of the
Báb with the character of His Mission. Mírzá Áqá Ján was
accordingly commissioned to bear to Mírzá Yaḥyá the newly
revealed Súriy-i-Amr, which unmistakably affirmed those claims, to
read aloud to him its contents, and demand an unequivocal and
conclusive reply. Mírzá Yaḥyá’s request for a one day respite,
during which he could meditate his answer, was granted. The only
reply, however, that was forthcoming was a counter-declaration,
specifying the hour and the minute in which he had been made the
recipient of an independent Revelation, necessitating the unqualified
submission to him of the peoples of the earth in both the East and
the West.
Repudiation by Mírzá Yaḥyá of the mission of Bahá’u’lláh
So presumptuous an assertion, made by so perfidious an adversary to
the envoy of the Bearer of so momentous a Revelation was the signal
for the open and final rupture between Bahá’u’lláh and Mírzá
Yaḥyá — a rupture that marks one of the darkest dates in Bahá’í
history. Wishing to allay the fierce animosity that blazed in the
bosom of His enemies, and to assure to each one of the exiles a
complete freedom to choose between Him and them, Bahá’u’lláh
withdrew with His family to the house of Riḍá Big (Shavvál
22, 1282 A.H.), which was rented by His order, and refused, for two
months, to associate with either friend or stranger, including His
own companions. He instructed Áqáy-i-Kalím to divide all the
furniture, bedding, clothing and utensils that were to be found in
His home, and send half to the house of Mírzá Yaḥyá; to deliver
to him certain relics he had long coveted, such as the seals, rings,
and manuscripts in the handwriting of the Báb; and to insure that he
received his full share of the allowance fixed by the government for
the maintenance of the exiles and their families. He, moreover,
directed Áqáy-i-Kalím to order to attend to Mírzá Yaḥyá’s
shopping, for several hours a day, any one of the companions whom he
himself might select, and to assure him that whatever would
henceforth be received in his name from Persia would be delivered
into his own hands.
“That day,” Áqáy-i-Kalím is reported to have informed Nabíl,
“witnessed a most great commotion. All the companions lamented in
their separation from the Blessed Beauty.” “Those days,” is the
written testimony of one of those companions, “were marked by
tumult and confusion. We were sore-perplexed, and greatly feared lest
we be permanently deprived of the bounty of His presence.”
This grief and perplexity were, however, destined to be of short
duration. The calumnies with which both Mírzá Yaḥyá and Siyyid
Muḥammad now loaded their letters, which they disseminated in
Persia and ‘Iráq, as well as the petitions, couched in obsequious
language, which the former had addressed to Khurshíd
Páshá, the governor of Adrianople, and to his assistant
‘Azíz Páshá, impelled Bahá’u’lláh to emerge from
His retirement. He was soon after informed that this same brother had
despatched one of his wives to the government house to complain that
her husband had been cheated of his rights, and that her children
were on the verge of starvation — an accusation that spread far and
wide and, reaching Constantinople, became, to Bahá’u’lláh’s
profound distress, the subject of excited discussion and injurious
comment in circles that had previously been greatly impressed by the
high standard which His noble and dignified behavior had set in that
city. Siyyid Muḥammad journeyed to the capital, begged the Persian
Ambassador, the Mushíru’d-Dawlih, to allot Mírzá Yaḥyá
and himself a stipend, accused Bahá’u’lláh of sending an agent
to assassinate Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, and spared no effort
to heap abuse and calumny on One Who had, for so long and so
patiently, forborne with him, and endured in silence the enormities
of which he had been guilty.
After a stay of about one year in the house of Riḍá Big
Bahá’u’lláh returned to the house He had occupied before His
withdrawal from His companions, and thence, after three months, He
transferred His residence to the house of ‘Izzat Áqá, in which He
continued to live until His departure from Adrianople. It was in this
house, in the month of Jamádíyu’l-Avval 1284 A.H. (Sept. 1867)
that an event of the utmost significance occurred, which completely
discomfited Mírzá Yaḥyá and his supporters, and proclaimed to
friend and foe alike Bahá’u’lláh’s triumph over them. A
certain Mír Muḥammad, a Bábí of Shíráz, greatly
resenting alike the claims and the cowardly seclusion of Mírzá
Yaḥyá, succeeded in forcing Siyyid Muḥammad to induce him to
meet Bahá’u’lláh face to face, so that a discrimination might
be publicly effected between the true and the false. Foolishly
assuming that his illustrious Brother would never countenance such a
proposition, Mírzá Yaḥyá appointed the mosque of Sulṭán Salím
as the place for their encounter. No sooner had Bahá’u’lláh
been informed of this arrangement than He set forth, on foot, in the
heat of midday, and accompanied by this same Mír Muḥammad, for the
afore-mentioned mosque, which was situated in a distant part of the
city, reciting, as He walked, through the streets and markets,
verses, in a voice and in a manner that greatly astonished those who
saw and heard Him.
“O Muḥammad!”
, are some of the words He uttered on that
memorable occasion, as testified by Himself in a Tablet, “He Who
is the Spirit hath, verily, issued from His habitation, and with Him
have come forth the souls of God’s chosen ones and the realities of
His Messengers. Behold, then, the dwellers of the realms on high
above Mine head, and all the testimonies of the Prophets in My grasp.
Say: Were all the divines, all the wise men, all the kings and rulers
on earth to gather together, I, in very truth, would confront them,
and would proclaim the verses of God, the Sovereign, the Almighty,
the All-Wise. I am He Who feareth no one, though all who are in
heaven and all who are on earth rise up against me.… This is Mine
hand which God hath turned white for all the worlds to behold. This
is My staff; were We to cast it down, it would, of a truth, swallow
up all created things.”
Mír Muḥammad, who had been sent
ahead to announce Bahá’u’lláh’s arrival, soon returned, and
informed Him that he who had challenged His authority wished, owing
to unforeseen circumstances, to postpone for a day or two the
interview. Upon His return to His house Bahá’u’lláh revealed a
Tablet, wherein He recounted what had happened, fixed the time for
the postponed interview, sealed the Tablet with His seal, entrusted
it to Nabíl, and instructed him to deliver it to one of the new
believers, Mullá Muḥammad-i-Tabrízí, for the information of
Siyyid Muḥammad, who was in the habit of frequenting that
believer’s shop. It was arranged to demand from Siyyid Muḥammad,
ere the delivery of that Tablet, a sealed note pledging Mírzá
Yaḥyá, in the event of failing to appear at the trysting-place, to
affirm in writing that his claims were false. Siyyid Muḥammad
promised that he would produce the next day the document required,
and though Nabíl, for three successive days, waited in that shop for
the reply, neither did the Siyyid appear, nor was such a note sent by
him. That undelivered Tablet, Nabíl, recording twenty-three years
later this historic episode in his chronicle, affirms was still in
his possession, “as fresh as the day on which the Most Great Branch
had penned it, and the seal of the Ancient Beauty had sealed and
adorned it,” a tangible and irrefutable testimony to Bahá’u’lláh’s
established ascendancy over a routed opponent.
Bahá’u’lláh’s reaction to this most distressful episode in
His ministry was, as already observed, characterized by acute
anguish. “He who for months and years,”
He laments, “I
reared with the hand of loving-kindness hath risen to take My life.”
“The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors,”
He wrote, in
allusion to these perfidious enemies, “have bowed Me down, and
turned My hair white. Shouldst thou present thyself before My throne,
thou wouldst fail to recognize the Ancient Beauty, for the freshness
of His countenance is altered, and its brightness hath faded, by
reason of the oppression of the infidels.”
“By God!”
He cries out, “No spot is left on My body that hath not been
touched by the spears of thy machinations.”
And again: “Thou
hast perpetrated against thy Brother what no man hath perpetrated
against another.”
“What hath proceeded from thy pen,”
He, furthermore, has affirmed, “hath caused the Countenances of
Glory to be prostrated upon the dust, hath rent in twain the Veil of
Grandeur in the Sublime Paradise, and lacerated the hearts of the
favored ones established upon the loftiest seats.”
And yet, in
the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, a forgiving Lord assures this same brother, this
“source of perversion,”
“from whose own soul the
winds of passion had risen and blown upon him,”
to “fear
not because of thy deeds,”
bids him “return unto God,
humble, submissive and lowly,”
and affirms that “He will
put away from thee thy sins,”
and that “thy Lord is the
Forgiving, the Mighty, the All-Merciful.”
The “Most Great Idol”
had at the bidding and through the
power of Him Who is the Fountain-head of the Most Great Justice been
cast out of the community of the Most Great Name, confounded,
abhorred and broken. Cleansed from this pollution, delivered from
this horrible possession, God’s infant Faith could now forge ahead,
and, despite the turmoil that had convulsed it, demonstrate its
capacity to fight further battles, capture loftier heights, and win
mightier victories.
A temporary breach had admittedly been made in the ranks of its
supporters. Its glory had been eclipsed, and its annals stained
forever. Its name, however, could not be obliterated, its spirit was
far from broken, nor could this so-called schism tear its fabric
asunder. The Covenant of the Báb, to which reference has already
been made, with its immutable truths, incontrovertible prophecies,
and repeated warnings, stood guard over that Faith, insuring its
integrity, demonstrating its incorruptibility, and perpetuating its
influence.
Though He Himself was bent with sorrow, and still suffered from the
effects of the attempt on His life, and though He was well aware a
further banishment was probably impending, yet, undaunted by the blow
which His Cause had sustained, and the perils with which it was
encompassed, Bahá’u’lláh arose with matchless power, even
before the ordeal was overpast, to proclaim the Mission with which He
had been entrusted to those who, in East and West, had the reins of
supreme temporal authority in their grasp. The day-star of His
Revelation was, through this very Proclamation, destined to shine in
its meridian glory, and His Faith manifest the plenitude of its
divine power.
Proclamation of the Message of Bahá’u’lláh
A period of prodigious activity ensued which, in its repercussions,
outshone the vernal years of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry. “Day
and night,” an eye-witness has written, “the Divine verses were
raining down in such number that it was impossible to record them.
Mírzá Áqá Ján wrote them as they were dictated, while the Most
Great Branch was continually occupied in transcribing them. There was
not a moment to spare.” “A number of secretaries,” Nabíl has
testified, “were busy day and night and yet they were unable to
cope with the task. Among them was Mírzá Báqir-i-Shírází.…
He alone transcribed no less than two thousand verses every day. He
labored during six or seven months. Every month the equivalent of
several volumes would be transcribed by him and sent to Persia. About
twenty volumes, in his fine penmanship, he left behind as a
remembrance for Mírzá Áqá Ján.” Bahá’u’lláh, Himself,
referring to the verses revealed by Him, has written: “Such are
the outpourings … from the clouds of Divine Bounty that within the
space of an hour the equivalent of a thousand verses hath been
revealed.”
“So great is the grace vouchsafed in this day
that in a single day and night, were an amanuensis capable of
accomplishing it to be found, the equivalent of the Persian Bayán
would be sent down from the heaven of Divine holiness.”
“I
swear by God!”
He, in another connection has affirmed, “In
those days the equivalent of all that hath been sent down aforetime
unto the Prophets hath been revealed.”
“That which hath
already been revealed in this land (Adrianople),”
He,
furthermore, referring to the copiousness of His writings, has
declared, “secretaries are incapable of transcribing. It has,
therefore, remained for the most part untranscribed.”
Already in the very midst of that grievous crisis, and even before it
came to a head, Tablets unnumbered were streaming from the pen of
Bahá’u’lláh, in which the implications of His newly-asserted
claims were fully expounded. The Súriy-i-Amr, the Lawḥ-i-Nuqṭih,
the Lawḥ-i-Aḥmad, the Súriy-i-Aṣḥáb, the Lawḥ-i-Sayyáḥ,
the Súriy-i-Damm, the Súriy-i-Ḥajj, the Lawḥu’r-Rúḥ, the
Lawḥu’r-Riḍván, the Lawḥu’t-Tuqá were among the Tablets
which His pen had already set down when He transferred His residence
to the house of ‘Izzat Áqá. Almost immediately after the “Most
Great Separation” had been effected, the weightiest Tablets
associated with His sojourn in Adrianople were revealed. The
Súriy-i-Mulúk, the most momentous Tablet revealed by Bahá’u’lláh
(Súrih of Kings) in which He, for the first time, directs His words
collectively to the entire company of the monarchs of East and West,
and in which the Sulṭán of Turkey, and his ministers, the kings of
Christendom, the French and Persian Ambassadors accredited to the
Sublime Porte, the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders in Constantinople,
its wise men and inhabitants, the people of Persia and the
philosophers of the world are separately addressed; the
Kitáb-i-Badí‘, His apologia, written to refute the accusations
levelled against Him by Mírzá Mihdíy-i-Rashtí,
corresponding to the Kitáb-i-Íqán, revealed in defense of the Bábí
Revelation; the Munájátháy-i-Ṣíyám (Prayers for Fasting),
written in anticipation of the Book of His Laws; the first Tablet to
Napoleon III, in which the Emperor of the French is addressed and the
sincerity of his professions put to the test; the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán,
His detailed epistle to Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, in which the
aims, purposes and principles of His Faith are expounded and the
validity of His Mission demonstrated; the Súriy-i-Ra’ís, begun in
the village of Káshánih on His way to Gallipoli, and
completed shortly after at Gyáwur-Kyuy — these may be regarded not
only as the most outstanding among the innumerable Tablets revealed
in Adrianople, but as occupying a foremost position among all the
writings of the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation.
In His message to the kings of the earth, Bahá’u’lláh, in the
Súriy-i-Mulúk, discloses the character of His Mission; exhorts
them to embrace His Message; affirms the validity of the Báb’s
Revelation; reproves them for their indifference to His Cause;
enjoins them to be just and vigilant, to compose their differences
and reduce their armaments; expatiates on His afflictions; commends
the poor to their care; warns them that “Divine chastisement”
will “assail”
them “from every direction,”
if
they refuse to heed His counsels, and prophesies His “triumph
upon earth”
though no king be found who would turn his face
towards Him.
The kings of Christendom, more specifically, Bahá’u’lláh, in
that same Tablet, censures for having failed to “welcome”
and “draw nigh”
unto Him Who is the “Spirit of
Truth,”
and for having persisted in “disporting”
themselves with their “pastimes and fancies,”
and declares
to them that they “shall be called to account”
for their
doings, “in the presence of Him Who shall gather together the
entire creation.”
He bids Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz “hearken to the speech …
of Him Who unerringly treadeth the Straight Path”
; exhorts him
to direct in person the affairs of his people, and not to repose
confidence in unworthy ministers; admonishes him not to rely on his
treasures, nor to “overstep the bounds of moderation”
but
to deal with his subjects with “undeviating justice”
; and
acquaints him with the overwhelming burden of His own tribulations.
In that same Tablet He asserts His innocence and His loyalty to the
Sulṭán and his ministers; describes the circumstances of His
banishment from the capital; and assures him of His prayers to God on
his behalf.
To this same Sulṭán He, moreover, as attested by the
Súriy-i-Ra’ís, transmitted, while in Gallipoli, a verbal message
through a Turkish officer named ‘Umar, requesting the sovereign to
grant Him a ten minute interview, “so that he may demand
whatsoever he would deem to be a sufficient testimony and would
regard as proof of the veracity of Him Who is the Truth,”
adding that “should God enable Him to produce it, let him, then,
release these wronged ones and leave them to themselves.”
To Napoleon III Bahá’u’lláh addressed a specific Tablet, which
was forwarded through one of the French ministers to the Emperor, in
which He dwelt on the sufferings endured by Himself and His
followers; avowed their innocence; reminded him of his two
pronouncements on behalf of the oppressed and the helpless; and,
desiring to test the sincerity of his motives, called upon him to
“inquire into the condition of such as have been wronged,”
and “extend his care to the weak,”
and look upon Him and
His fellow-exiles “with the eye of loving-kindness.”
To Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh He revealed a Tablet, the
lengthiest epistle to any single sovereign, in which He testified to
the unparalleled severity of the troubles that had touched Him;
recalled the sovereign’s recognition of His innocence on the eve of
His departure for ‘Iráq; adjured him to rule with justice;
described God’s summons to Himself to arise and proclaim His
Message; affirmed the disinterestedness of His counsels; proclaimed
His belief in the unity of God and in His Prophets; uttered several
prayers on the Sháh’s behalf; justified His own conduct in
‘Iráq; stressed the beneficent influence of His teachings; and
laid special emphasis on His condemnation of all forms of violence
and mischief. He, moreover, in that same Tablet, demonstrated the
validity of His Mission; expressed the wish to be “brought face
to face with the divines of the age, and produce proofs and
testimonies in the presence of His Majesty,”
which would
establish the truth of His Cause; exposed the perversity of the
ecclesiastical leaders in His own days, as well as in the days of
Jesus Christ and of Muḥammad; prophesied that His sufferings will
be followed by the “outpourings of a supreme mercy”
and by
an “overflowing prosperity”
; drew a parallel between the
afflictions that had befallen His kindred and those endured by the
relatives of the Prophet Muḥammad; expatiated on the instability of
human affairs; depicted the city to which He was about to be
banished; foreshadowed the future abasement of the ‘ulamás; and
concluded with yet another expression of hope that the sovereign
might be assisted by God to “aid His Faith and turn towards His
justice.”
To ‘Alí Páshá, the Grand Vizir, Bahá’u’lláh
addressed the Súriy-i-Ra’ís. In this He bids him “hearken to
the voice of God”
; declares that neither his “grunting,”
nor the “barking”
of those around him, nor “the hosts
of the world”
can withhold the Almighty from achieving His
purpose; accuses him of having perpetrated that which has caused “the
Apostle of God to lament in the most sublime Paradise,”
and of
having conspired with the Persian Ambassador to harm Him; forecasts
“the manifest loss”
in which he would soon find himself;
glorifies the Day of His own Revelation; prophesies that this
Revelation will “erelong encompass the earth and all that dwell
therein,”
and that the “Land of Mystery (Adrianople)
and what is beside it … shall pass out of the hands of the King,
and commotions shall appear, and the voice of lamentation shall be
raised, and the evidences of mischief shall be revealed on all
sides”
; identifies that same Revelation with the Revelations of
Moses and of Jesus; recalls the “arrogance”
of the Persian
Emperor in the days of Muḥammad, the “transgression”
of
Pharaoh in the days of Moses, and of the “impiety”
of
Nimrod in the days of Abraham; and proclaims His purpose to “quicken
the world and unite all its peoples.”
The ministers of the Sulṭán, He, in the Súriy-i-Mulúk,
reprimands for their conduct, in passages in which He challenges the
soundness of their principles, predicts that they will be punished
for their acts, denounces their pride and injustice, asserts His
integrity and detachment from the vanities of the world, and
proclaims His innocence.
The French Ambassador accredited to the Sublime Porte, He, in that
same Súrih, rebukes for having combined with the Persian Ambassador
against Him; reminds him of the counsels of Jesus Christ, as recorded
in the Gospel of St. John; warns him that he will be held answerable
for the things his hands have wrought; and counsels him, together
with those like him, not to deal with any one as he has dealt with
Him.
To the Persian Ambassador in Constantinople, He, in that same Tablet,
addresses lengthy passages in which He exposes his delusions and
calumnies, denounces his injustice and the injustice of his
countrymen, assures him that He harbors no ill-will against him,
declares that, should he realize the enormity of his deed, he would
mourn all the days of his life, affirms that he will persist till his
death in his heedlessness, justifies His own conduct in Ṭihrán and
in ‘Iráq, and bears witness to the corruption of the Persian
minister in Baghdád and to his collusion with this minister.
To the entire company of the ecclesiastical leaders of Sunní Islám
in Constantinople He addresses a specific message in the same
Súriy-i-Mulúk in which He denounces them as heedless and
spiritually dead; reproaches them for their pride and for failing to
seek His presence; unveils to them the full glory and significance of
His Mission; affirms that their leaders, had they been alive, would
have “circled around Him”
; condemns them as “worshippers
of names”
and lovers of leadership; and avows that God will
find naught acceptable from them unless they “be made new”
in His estimation.
To the wise men of the City of Constantinople and the philosophers of
the world He devotes the concluding passages of the Súriy-i-Mulúk,
in which He cautions them not to wax proud before God; reveals to
them the essence of true wisdom; stresses the importance of faith and
upright conduct; rebukes them for having failed to seek enlightenment
from Him; and counsels them not to “overstep the bounds of God,”
nor turn their gaze towards the “ways of men and their habits.”
To the inhabitants of Constantinople He, in that same Tablet,
declares that He “feareth no one except God,”
that He
speaks “naught except at His (God) bidding,”
that
He follows naught save God’s truth, that He found the governors and
elders of the city as “children gathered about and disporting
themselves with clay,”
and that He perceived no one
sufficiently mature to acquire the truths which God had taught Him.
He bids them take firm hold on the precepts of God; warns them not to
wax proud before God and His loved ones; recalls the tribulations,
and extols the virtues, of the Imám Ḥusayn; prays that He Himself
may suffer similar afflictions; prophesies that erelong God will
raise up a people who will recount His troubles and demand the
restitution of His rights from His oppressors; and calls upon them to
give ear to His words, and return unto God and repent.
And finally, addressing the people of Persia, He, in that same
Tablet, affirms that were they to put Him to death God will assuredly
raise up One in His stead, and asserts that the Almighty will
“perfect His light”
though they, in their secret hearts,
abhor it.
So weighty a proclamation, at so critical a period, by the Bearer of
so sublime a Message, to the kings of the earth, Muslim and Christian
alike, to ministers and ambassadors, to the ecclesiastical heads of
Sunní Islám, to the wise men and inhabitants of Constantinople — the
seat of both the Sultanate and the Caliphate — to the philosophers of
the world and the people of Persia, is not to be regarded as the only
outstanding event associated with Bahá’u’lláh’s sojourn in
Adrianople. Other developments and happenings of great, though
lesser, significance must be noted in these pages, if we would justly
esteem the importance of this agitated and most momentous phase of
Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry.
It was at this period, and as a direct consequence of the rebellion
and appalling downfall of Mírzá Yaḥyá, that certain disciples of
Bahá’u’lláh (who may well rank among the “treasures”
promised Him by God when bowed down with chains in the Síyáh-Chál
of Ṭihrán), including among them one of the Letters of the Living,
some survivors of the struggle of Ṭabarsí, and the erudite Mírzá
Aḥmad-i-Azghandí, arose to defend the newborn Faith, to
refute, in numerous and detailed apologies, as their Master had done
in the Kitáb-i-Badí‘, the arguments of His opponents, and to
expose their odious deeds. It was at this period that the limits of
the Faith were enlarged, when its banner was permanently planted in
the Caucasus by the hand of Mullá Abú-Ṭálib and others whom Nabíl
had converted, when its first Egyptian center was established at the
time when Siyyid Ḥusayn-i-Káshání and Ḥájí
Báqir-i-Káshání took up their residence in that country,
and when to the lands already warmed and illuminated by the early
rays of God’s Revelation — ‘Iráq, Turkey and Persia — Syria was
added. It was in this period that the greeting of “Alláh-u-Abhá”
superseded the old salutation of “Alláh-u-Akbar,”
and was
simultaneously adopted in Persia and Adrianople, the first to use it
in the former country, at the suggestion of Nabíl, being Mullá
Muḥammad-i-Furúghí, one of the defenders of the Fort of
Shaykh Ṭabarsí. It was in this period that the
phrase “the people of the Bayán,”
now denoting the
followers of Mírzá Yaḥyá, was discarded, and was supplanted by
the term “the people of Bahá.”
It was during those days
that Nabíl, recently honored with the title of Nabíl-i-A‘ẓam,
in a Tablet specifically addressed to him, in which he was bidden to
“deliver the Message”
of his Lord “to East and West,”
arose, despite intermittent persecutions, to tear asunder the “most
grievous veil,”
to implant the love of an adored Master in the
hearts of His countrymen, and to champion the Cause which his Beloved
had, under such tragic conditions, proclaimed. It was during those
same days that Bahá’u’lláh instructed this same Nabíl to
recite on His behalf the two newly revealed Tablets of the
Pilgrimage, and to perform, in His stead, the rites prescribed in
them, when visiting the Báb’s House in Shíráz and the
Most Great House in Baghdád — an act that marks the inception
of one of the holiest observances, which, in a later period, the
Kitáb-i-Aqdas was to formally establish. It was during this period
that the “Prayers of Fasting” were revealed by Bahá’u’lláh,
in anticipation of the Law which that same Book was soon to
promulgate. It was, too, during the days of Bahá’u’lláh’s
banishment to Adrianople that a Tablet was addressed by Him to Mullá
‘Alí-Akbar-i-Shahmírzádí and Jamál-i-Burújirdí, two
of His well-known followers in Ṭihrán, instructing them to
transfer, with the utmost secrecy, the remains of the Báb from the
Imám-Zádih Ma‘ṣúm, where they were concealed, to some other
place of safety — an act which was subsequently proved to have been
providential, and which may be regarded as marking another stage in
the long and laborious transfer of those remains to the heart of Mt.
Carmel, and to the spot which He, in His instructions to
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was later to designate. It was during that
period that the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn (Súrih of the Branch) was
revealed, in which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s future station is
foreshadowed, and in which He is eulogized as the “Branch of
Holiness,”
the “Limb of the Law of God,”
the “Trust
of God,”
“sent down in the form of a human temple”
— a
Tablet which may well be regarded as the harbinger of the rank which
was to be bestowed upon Him, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and which was to
be later elucidated and confirmed in the Book of His Covenant. And
finally, it was during that period that the first pilgrimages were
made to the residence of One Who was now the visible Center of a
newly-established Faith — pilgrimages which by reason of their number
and nature, an alarmed government in Persia was first impelled to
restrict, and later to prohibit, but which were the precursors of the
converging streams of Pilgrims who, from East and West, at first
under perilous and arduous circumstances, were to direct their steps
towards the prison-fortress of ‘Akká — pilgrimages which were to
culminate in the historic arrival of a royal convert at the foot of
Mt. Carmel, who, at the very threshold of a longed-for and much
advertised pilgrimage, was so cruelly thwarted from achieving her
purpose.
These notable developments, some synchronizing with, and others
flowing from, the proclamation of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, and
from the internal convulsion which the Cause had undergone, could not
escape the attention of the external enemies of the Movement, who
were bent on exploiting to the utmost every crisis which the folly of
its friends or the perfidy of renegades might at any time
precipitate. The thick clouds had hardly been dissipated by the
sudden outburst of the rays of a Sun, now shining from its meridian,
when the darkness of another catastrophe — the last the Author of
that Faith was destined to suffer — fell upon it, blackening its
firmament and subjecting it to one of the severest trials it had as
yet experienced.
Emboldened by the recent ordeals with which Bahá’u’lláh had
been so cruelly afflicted, these enemies, who had been momentarily
quiescent, began to demonstrate afresh, and in a number of ways, the
latent animosity they nursed in their hearts. A persecution, varying
in the degree of its severity, began once more to break out in
various countries. In Ádhirbáyján and Zanján, in Níshápúr
and Ṭihrán, the adherents of the Faith were either imprisoned,
vilified, penalized, tortured or put to death. Among the sufferers
may be singled out the intrepid Najaf-‘Alíy-i-Zanjání, a
survivor of the struggle of Zanján, and immortalized in the “Epistle
to the Son of the Wolf,” who, bequeathing the gold in his
possession to his executioner, was heard to shout aloud “Yá
Rabbíya’l-Abhá” before he was beheaded. In Egypt, a greedy and
vicious consul-general extorted no less than a hundred thousand
túmáns from a wealthy Persian convert, named Ḥájí
Abu’l-Qásim-i-Shírází; arrested Ḥájí Mírzá
Ḥaydar-‘Alí and six of his fellow-believers, and instigated
their condemnation to a nine year exile in Khartúm,
confiscating all the writings in their possession, and then threw
into prison Nabíl, whom Bahá’u’lláh had sent to appeal to the
Khedive on their behalf. In Baghdád and Káẓimayn
indefatigable enemies, watching their opportunity, subjected
Bahá’u’lláh’s faithful supporters to harsh and ignominious
treatment; savagely disemboweled ‘Abdu’r-Rasúl-i-Qumí, as he
was carrying water in a skin, at the hour of dawn, from the river to
the Most Great House, and banished, amidst scenes of public derision,
about seventy companions to Mosul, including women and children.
No less active were Mírzá Ḥusayn-Khán, the
Mushíru’d-Dawlih, and his associates, who, determined to
take full advantage of the troubles that had recently visited
Bahá’u’lláh, arose to encompass His destruction. The
authorities in the capital were incensed by the esteem shown Him by
the governor Muḥammad Pásháy-i-Qibrisí, a former Grand
Vizir, and his successors Sulaymán Páshá, of the Qádiríyyih
Order, and particularly Khurshíd Páshá, who,
openly and on many occasions, frequented the house of Bahá’u’lláh,
entertained Him in the days of Ramaḍán, and evinced a fervent
admiration for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. They were well aware of the
challenging tone Bahá’u’lláh had assumed in some of His newly
revealed Tablets, and conscious of the instability prevailing in
their own country. They were disturbed by the constant comings and
goings of pilgrims in Adrianople, and by the exaggerated reports of
Fu’ád Páshá, who had recently passed through on a tour of
inspection. The petitions of Mírzá Yaḥyá which reached them
through Siyyid Muḥammad, his agent, had provoked them. Anonymous
letters (written by this same Siyyid and by an accomplice, Áqá Ján,
serving in the Turkish artillery) which perverted the writings of
Bahá’u’lláh, and which accused Him of having conspired with
Bulgarian leaders and certain ministers of European powers to
achieve, with the help of some thousands of His followers, the
conquest of Constantinople, had filled their breasts with alarm. And
now, encouraged by the internal dissensions which had shaken the
Faith, and irritated by the evident esteem in which Bahá’u’lláh
was held by the consuls of foreign powers stationed in Adrianople,
they determined to take drastic and immediate action which would
extirpate that Faith, isolate its Author and reduce Him to
powerlessness. The indiscretions committed by some of its
over-zealous followers, who had arrived in Constantinople, no doubt,
aggravated an already acute situation.
His Banishment to ‘Akká
The fateful decision was eventually arrived at to banish Bahá’u’lláh
to the penal colony of ‘Akká, and Mírzá Yaḥyá to Famagusta in
Cyprus. This decision was embodied in a strongly worded Farmán,
issued by Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz. The companions of
Bahá’u’lláh, who had arrived in the capital, together with a
few who later joined them, as well as Áqá Ján, the notorious
mischief-maker, were arrested, interrogated, deprived of their papers
and flung into prison. The members of the community in Adrianople
were, several times, summoned to the governorate to ascertain their
number, while rumors were set afloat that they were to be dispersed
and banished to different places or secretly put to death.
Suddenly, one morning, the house of Bahá’u’lláh was surrounded
by soldiers, sentinels were posted at its gates, His followers were
again summoned by the authorities, interrogated, and ordered to make
ready for their departure. “The loved ones of God and His
kindred,”
is Bahá’u’lláh’s testimony in the
Súriy-i-Ra’ís, “were left on the first night without food …
The people surrounded the house, and Muslims and Christians wept over
Us… We perceived that the weeping of the people of the Son
(Christians) exceeded the weeping of others — a sign for such
as ponder.”
“A great tumult seized the people,” writes Áqá
Riḍá, one of the stoutest supporters of Bahá’u’lláh, exiled
with him all the way from Baghdád to ‘Akká, “All were
perplexed and full of regret … Some expressed their sympathy,
others consoled us, and wept over us … Most of our possessions were
auctioned at half their value.” Some of the consuls of foreign
powers called on Bahá’u’lláh, and expressed their readiness to
intervene with their respective governments on His behalf — suggestions
for which He expressed appreciation, but which He firmly declined.
“The consuls of that city (Adrianople) gathered in the
presence of this Youth at the hour of His departure,”
He
Himself has written, “and expressed their desire to aid Him.
They, verily, evinced towards Us manifest affection.”
The Persian Ambassador promptly informed the Persian consuls in ‘Iráq
and Egypt that the Turkish government had withdrawn its protection
from the Bábís, and that they were free to treat them as they
pleased. Several pilgrims, among whom was Ḥájí Muḥammad
Ismá‘íl-i-Káshání, surnamed Anís in the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís,
had, in the meantime, arrived in Adrianople, and had to depart to
Gallipoli, without even beholding the face of their Master. Two of
the companions were forced to divorce their wives, as their relatives
refused to allow them to go into exile. Khurshíd
Páshá, who had already several times categorically denied
the written accusations sent him by the authorities in
Constantinople, and had interceded vigorously on behalf of
Bahá’u’lláh, was so embarrassed by the action of his government
that he decided to absent himself when informed of His immediate
departure from the city, and instructed the Registrar to convey to
Him the purport of the Sulṭán’s edict. Ḥájí
Ja‘far-i-Tabrízí, one of the believers, finding that his name had
been omitted from the list of the exiles who might accompany
Bahá’u’lláh, cut his throat with a razor, but was prevented in
time from ending his life — an act which Bahá’u’lláh, in the
Súriy-i-Ra’ís, characterizes as “unheard of in bygone
centuries,”
and which “God hath set apart for this
Revelation, as an evidence of the power of His might.”
On the twenty-second of the month of Rabí‘u’th-Thání
1285 A.H. (August 12, 1868) Bahá’u’lláh and His family,
escorted by a Turkish captain, Ḥasan Effendi by name, and other
soldiers appointed by the local government, set out on their four-day
journey to Gallipoli, riding in carriages and stopping on their way
at Uzún-Kúprú and Káshánih, at which latter place the
Súriy-i-Ra’ís was revealed. “The inhabitants of the quarter in
which Bahá’u’lláh had been living, and the neighbors who had
gathered to bid Him farewell, came one after the other,” writes an
eye-witness, “with the utmost sadness and regret to kiss His hands
and the hem of His robe, expressing meanwhile their sorrow at His
departure. That day, too, was a strange day. Methinks the city, its
walls and its gates bemoaned their imminent separation from Him.”
“On that day,” writes another eye-witness, “there was a
wonderful concourse of Muslims and Christians at the door of our
Master’s house. The hour of departure was a memorable one. Most of
those present were weeping and wailing, especially the Christians.”
“Say,”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself declares in the
Súriy-i-Ra’ís, “this Youth hath departed out of this country
and deposited beneath every tree and every stone a trust, which God
will erelong bring forth through the power of truth.”
Several of the companions who had been brought from Constantinople
were awaiting them in Gallipoli. On his arrival Bahá’u’lláh
made the following pronouncement to Ḥasan Effendi, who, his duty
discharged, was taking his leave: “Tell the king that this
territory will pass out of his hands, and his affairs will be thrown
into confusion.”
“To this,” Áqá Riḍá, the recorder of
that scene has written, “Bahá’u’lláh furthermore added: ‘Not
I speak these words, but God speaketh them.’ In those moments He
was uttering verses which we, who were downstairs, could overhear.
They were spoken with such vehemence and power that, methinks, the
foundations of the house itself trembled.”
Even in Gallipoli, where three nights were spent, no one knew what
Bahá’u’lláh’s destination would be. Some believed that He and
His brothers would be banished to one place, and the remainder
dispersed, and sent into exile. Others thought that His companions
would be sent back to Persia, while still others expected their
immediate extermination. The government’s original order was to
banish Bahá’u’lláh, Áqáy-i-Kalím and Mírzá Muḥammad-Qulí,
with a servant to ‘Akká, while the rest were to proceed to
Constantinople. This order, which provoked scenes of indescribable
distress, was, however, at the insistence of Bahá’u’lláh, and
by the instrumentality of ‘Umar Effendi, a major appointed to
accompany the exiles, revoked. It was eventually decided that all the
exiles, numbering about seventy, should be banished to ‘Akká.
Instructions were, moreover, issued that a certain number of the
adherents of Mírzá Yaḥyá, among whom were Siyyid Muḥammad and
Áqá Ján, should accompany these exiles, whilst four of the
companions of Bahá’u’lláh were ordered to depart with the
Azalís for Cyprus.
So grievous were the dangers and trials confronting Bahá’u’lláh
at the hour of His departure from Gallipoli that He warned His
companions that “this journey will be unlike any of the previous
journeys,”
and that whoever did not feel himself “man
enough to face the future”
had best “depart to whatever
place he pleaseth, and be preserved from tests, for hereafter he will
find himself unable to leave”
— a warning which His companions
unanimously chose to disregard.
On the morning of the 2nd of Jamádíyu’l-Avval 1285 A.H. (August
21, 1868) they all embarked in an Austrian-Lloyd steamer for
Alexandria, touching at Madellí, and stopping for two days at
Smyrna, where Jináb-i-Munír, surnamed Ismu’lláhu’l-Muníb,
became gravely ill, and had, to his great distress, to be left behind
in a hospital where he soon after died. In Alexandria they
transhipped into a steamer of the same company, bound for Haifa,
where, after brief stops at Port Said and Jaffa, they landed, setting
out, a few hours later, in a sailing vessel, for ‘Akká, where they
disembarked, in the course of the afternoon of the 12th of
Jamádíyu’l-Avval 1285 A.H. (August 31, 1868). It was at the
moment when Bahá’u’lláh had stepped into the boat which was to
carry Him to the landing-stage in Haifa that ‘Abdu’l-Ghaffár,
one of the four companions condemned to share the exile of Mírzá
Yaḥyá, and whose “detachment, love and trust in God”
Bahá’u’lláh had greatly praised, cast himself, in his despair,
into the sea, shouting “Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá,” and was
subsequently rescued and resuscitated with the greatest difficulty,
only to be forced by adamant officials to continue his voyage, with
Mírzá Yaḥyá’s party, to the destination originally appointed
for him.
The arrival of Bahá’u’lláh in ‘Akká marks the opening of the
last phase of His forty-year long ministry, the final stage, and
indeed the climax, of the banishment in which the whole of that
ministry was spent. A banishment that had, at first, brought Him to
the immediate vicinity of the strongholds of Shí‘ah
orthodoxy and into contact with its outstanding exponents, and which,
at a later period, had carried Him to the capital of the Ottoman
empire, and led Him to address His epoch-making pronouncements to the
Sulṭán, to his ministers and to the ecclesiastical leaders of
Sunní Islám, had now been instrumental in landing Him upon the
shores of the Holy Land — the Land promised by God to Abraham,
sanctified by the Revelation of Moses, honored by the lives and
labors of the Hebrew patriarchs, judges, kings and prophets, revered
as the cradle of Christianity, and as the place where Zoroaster,
according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s testimony, had “held
converse with some of the Prophets of Israel,”
and associated
by Islám with the Apostle’s night-journey, through the seven
heavens, to the throne of the Almighty. Within the confines of this
holy and enviable country, “the nest of all the Prophets of
God,”
“the Vale of God’s unsearchable Decree, the
snow-white Spot, the Land of unfading splendor”
was the Exile
of Baghdád, of Constantinople and Adrianople condemned to
spend no less than a third of the allotted span of His life, and over
half of the total period of His Mission. “It is difficult,”
declares ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “to understand how Bahá’u’lláh
could have been obliged to leave Persia, and to pitch His tent in
this Holy Land, but for the persecution of His enemies, His
banishment and exile.”
Significance of His banishment to the Holy Land
Indeed such a consummation, He assures us, had been actually
prophesied “through the tongue of the Prophets two or three
thousand years before.”
God, “faithful to His promise,”
had, “to some of the Prophets”
“revealed and given
the good news that the ‘Lord of Hosts should be manifested in the
Holy Land.’”
Isaiah had, in this connection, announced in his
Book: “Get thee up into the high mountain, O Zion that bringest
good tidings; lift up thy voice with strength, O Jerusalem, that
bringest good tidings. Lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities
of Judah: ‘Behold your God! Behold the Lord God will come with
strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him.’”
David, in his
Psalms, had predicted: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even
lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come
in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of
Glory.”
“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath
shined. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence.”
Amos
had, likewise, foretold His coming: “The Lord will roar from
Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the
shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither.”
‘Akká, itself, flanked by the “glory of Lebanon,”
and
lying in full view of the “splendor of Carmel,”
at the
foot of the hills which enclose the home of Jesus Christ Himself, had
been described by David as “the Strong City,”
designated
by Hosea as “a door of hope,”
and alluded to by Ezekiel as
“the gate that looketh towards the East,”
whereunto “the
glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the East,”
His
voice “like a noise of many waters.”
To it the Arabian
Prophet had referred as “a city in Syria to which God hath shown
His special mercy,”
situated “betwixt two mountains … in
the middle of a meadow,”
“by the shore of the sea …
suspended beneath the Throne,”
“white, whose whiteness is
pleasing unto God.”
“Blessed the man,”
He, moreover,
as confirmed by Bahá’u’lláh, had declared, “that hath
visited ‘Akká, and blessed he that hath visited the visitor of
‘Akká.”
Furthermore, “He that raiseth therein the call
to prayer, his voice will be lifted up unto Paradise.”
And
again: “The poor of ‘Akká are the kings of Paradise and the
princes thereof. A month in ‘Akká is better than a thousand years
elsewhere.”
Moreover, in a remarkable tradition, which is
contained in Shaykh Ibnu’l-‘Arabí’s work,
entitled “Futúḥát-i-Makkíyyih,” and which is recognized as
an authentic utterance of Muḥammad, and is quoted by Mírzá
Abu’l-Faḍl in his “Fará’id,” this significant prediction
has been made: “All of them (the companions of the Qá’im)
shall be slain except One Who shall reach the plain of ‘Akká, the
Banquet-Hall of God.”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself, as attested by Nabíl in his narrative,
had, as far back as the first years of His banishment to Adrianople,
alluded to that same city in His Lawḥ-i-Sayyáḥ, designating it
as the “Vale of Nabíl,” the word Nabíl being equal in numerical
value to that of ‘Akká. “Upon Our arrival,”
that Tablet
had predicted, “We were welcomed with banners of light,
whereupon the Voice of the Spirit cried out saying: ‘Soon will all
that dwell on earth be enlisted under these banners.’”
The banishment, lasting no less than twenty-four years, to which two
Oriental despots had, in their implacable enmity and
shortsightedness, combined to condemn Bahá’u’lláh, will go down
in history as a period which witnessed a miraculous and truly
revolutionizing change in the circumstances attending the life and
activities of the Exile Himself, will be chiefly remembered for the
widespread recrudescence of persecution, intermittent but singularly
cruel, throughout His native country and the simultaneous increase in
the number of His followers, and, lastly, for an enormous extension
in the range and volume of His writings.
Hardships suffered during the early years of His incarceration
His arrival at the penal colony of ‘Akká, far from proving the end
of His afflictions, was but the beginning of a major crisis,
characterized by bitter suffering, severe restrictions, and intense
turmoil, which, in its gravity, surpassed even the agonies of the
Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán, and to which no other event, in
the history of the entire century can compare, except the internal
convulsion that rocked the Faith in Adrianople. “Know thou,”
Bahá’u’lláh, wishing to emphasize the criticalness of the first
nine years of His banishment to that prison-city, has written, “that
upon Our arrival at this Spot, We chose to designate it as the ‘Most
Great Prison.’ Though previously subjected in another land (Ṭihrán)
to chains and fetters, We yet refused to call it by that name. Say:
Ponder thereon, O ye endued with understanding!”
The ordeal He endured, as a direct consequence of the attempt on the
life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, was one which had been
inflicted upon Him solely by the external enemies of the Faith. The
travail in Adrianople, the effects of which all but sundered the
community of the Báb’s followers, was, on the other hand, purely
internal in character. This fresh crisis which, during almost a
decade, agitated Him and His companions, was, however, marked
throughout not only by the assaults of His adversaries from without,
but by the machinations of enemies from within, as well as by the
grievous misdeeds of those who, though bearing His name, perpetrated
what made His heart and His pen alike to lament.
‘Akká, the ancient Ptolemais, the St. Jean d’Acre of the
Crusaders, that had successfully defied the siege of Napoleon, had
sunk, under the Turks, to the level of a penal colony to which
murderers, highway robbers and political agitators were consigned
from all parts of the Turkish empire. It was girt about by a double
system of ramparts; was inhabited by a people whom Bahá’u’lláh
stigmatized as “the generation of vipers”
; was devoid of
any source of water within its gates; was flea-infested, damp and
honey-combed with gloomy, filthy and tortuous lanes. “According
to what they say,”
the Supreme Pen has recorded in the
Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán, “it is the most desolate of the cities of
the world, the most unsightly of them in appearance, the most
detestable in climate, and the foulest in water. It is as though it
were the metropolis of the owl.”
So putrid was its air that,
according to a proverb, a bird when flying over it would drop dead.
Explicit orders had been issued by the Sulṭán and his ministers to
subject the exiles, who were accused of having grievously erred and
led others far astray, to the strictest confinement. Hopes were
confidently expressed that the sentence of life-long imprisonment
pronounced against them would lead to their eventual extermination.
The farmán of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, dated the fifth of
Rabí‘u’th-Thání 1285 A.H. (July 26, 1868), not
only condemned them to perpetual banishment, but stipulated their
strict incarceration, and forbade them to associate either with each
other or with the local inhabitants. The text of the farmán itself
was read publicly, soon after the arrival of the exiles, in the
principal mosque of the city as a warning to the population. The
Persian Ambassador, accredited to the Sublime Porte, had thus assured
his government, in a letter, written a little over a year after their
banishment to ‘Akká: “I have issued telegraphic and written
instructions, forbidding that He (Bahá’u’lláh) associate with
any one except His wives and children, or leave under any
circumstances, the house wherein He is imprisoned. ‘Abbás-Qulí
Khán, the Consul-General in Damascus … I have, three days
ago, sent back, instructing him to proceed direct to ‘Akká …
confer with its governor regarding all necessary measures for the
strict maintenance of their imprisonment … and appoint, before his
return to Damascus, a representative on the spot to insure that the
orders issued by the Sublime Porte will, in no wise, be disobeyed. I
have, likewise, instructed him that once every three months he should
proceed from Damascus to ‘Akká, and personally watch over them,
and submit his report to the Legation.” Such was the isolation
imposed upon them that the Bahá’ís of Persia, perturbed by the
rumors set afloat by the Azalís of Iṣfahán that Bahá’u’lláh
had been drowned, induced the British Telegraph office in Julfá to
ascertain on their behalf the truth of the matter.
Having, after a miserable voyage, disembarked at ‘Akká, all the
exiles, men, women and children, were, under the eyes of a curious
and callous population that had assembled at the port to behold the
“God of the Persians,” conducted to the army barracks, where they
were locked in, and sentinels detailed to guard them. “The first
night,”
Bahá’u’lláh testifies in the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís,
“all were deprived of either food or drink … They even begged
for water, and were refused.”
So filthy and brackish was the
water in the pool of the courtyard that no one could drink it. Three
loaves of black and salty bread were assigned to each, which they
were later permitted to exchange, when escorted by guards to the
market, for two of better quality. Subsequently they were allowed a
mere pittance as substitute for the allotted dole of bread. All fell
sick, except two, shortly after their arrival. Malaria, dysentery,
combined with the sultry heat, added to their miseries. Three
succumbed, among them two brothers, who died the same night,
“locked,”
as testified by Bahá’u’lláh, “in each
other’s arms.”
The carpet used by Him He gave to be sold in
order to provide for their winding-sheets and burial. The paltry sum
obtained after it had been auctioned was delivered to the guards, who
had refused to bury them without first being paid the necessary
expenses. Later, it was learned that, unwashed and unshrouded, they
had buried them, without coffins, in the clothes they wore, though,
as affirmed by Bahá’u’lláh, they were given twice the amount
required for their burial. “None,”
He Himself has written,
“knoweth what befell Us, except God, the Almighty, the
All-Knowing … From the foundation of the world until the present
day a cruelty such as this hath neither been seen nor heard of.”
“He hath, during the greater part of His life,”
He,
referring to Himself, has, moreover, recorded, “been sore-tried
in the clutches of His enemies. His sufferings have now reached their
culmination in this afflictive Prison, into which His oppressors have
so unjustly thrown Him.”
The few pilgrims who, despite the ban that had been so rigidly
imposed, managed to reach the gates of the Prison — some of whom had
journeyed the entire distance from Persia on foot — had to content
themselves with a fleeting glimpse of the face of the Prisoner, as
they stood, beyond the second moat, facing the window of His Prison.
The very few who succeeded in penetrating into the city had, to their
great distress, to retrace their steps without even beholding His
countenance. The first among them, the self-denying Ḥájí
Abu’l-Ḥasan-i-Ardikání, surnamed Amín-i-Iláhí (Trusted of
God), to enter His presence was only able to do so in a public bath,
where it had been arranged that he should see Bahá’u’lláh
without approaching Him or giving any sign of recognition. Another
pilgrim, Ustád Ismá‘íl-i-Káshí, arriving from Mosul,
posted himself on the far side of the moat, and, gazing for hours, in
rapt adoration, at the window of his Beloved, failed in the end,
owing to the feebleness of his sight, to discern His face, and had to
turn back to the cave which served as his dwelling-place on Mt.
Carmel — an episode that moved to tears the Holy Family who had been
anxiously watching from afar the frustration of his hopes. Nabíl
himself had to precipitately flee the city, where he had been
recognized, had to satisfy himself with a brief glimpse of
Bahá’u’lláh from across that same moat, and continued to roam
the countryside around Nazareth, Haifa, Jerusalem and Hebron, until
the gradual relaxation of restrictions enabled him to join the
exiles.
To the galling weight of these tribulations was now added the bitter
grief of a sudden tragedy — the premature loss of the noble, the
pious Mírzá Mihdí, the Purest Branch, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
twenty-two year old brother, an amanuensis of Bahá’u’lláh and a
companion of His exile from the days when, as a child, he was brought
from Ṭihrán to Baghdád to join his Father after His return
from Sulaymáníyyih. He was pacing the roof of the barracks in the
twilight, one evening, wrapped in his customary devotions, when he
fell through the unguarded skylight onto a wooden crate, standing on
the floor beneath, which pierced his ribs, and caused, twenty-two
hours later, his death, on the 23rd of Rabí‘u’l-Avval 1287 A.H.
(June 23, 1870). His dying supplication to a grieving Father was that
his life might be accepted as a ransom for those who were prevented
from attaining the presence of their Beloved.
In a highly significant prayer, revealed by Bahá’u’lláh in
memory of His son — a prayer that exalts his death to the rank of
those great acts of atonement associated with Abraham’s intended
sacrifice of His son, with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the
martyrdom of the Imám Ḥusayn — we read the following: “I
have, O my Lord, offered up that which Thou hast given Me, that Thy
servants may be quickened, and all that dwell on earth be united.”
And, likewise, these prophetic words, addressed to His martyred son:
“Thou art the Trust of God and His Treasure in this Land.
Erelong will God reveal through thee that which He hath desired.”
After he had been washed in the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, he
“that was created of the light of Bahá,”
to whose
“meekness”
the Supreme Pen had testified, and of the
“mysteries”
of whose ascension that same Pen had made
mention, was borne forth, escorted by the fortress guards, and laid
to rest, beyond the city walls, in a spot adjacent to the shrine of
Nabí Ṣáliḥ, from whence, seventy years later, his remains,
simultaneously with those of his illustrious mother, were to be
translated to the slopes of Mt. Carmel, in the precincts of the grave
of his sister, and under the shadow of the Báb’s holy sepulcher.
Nor was this the full measure of the afflictions endured by the
Prisoner of ‘Akká and His fellow-exiles. Four months after this
tragic event a mobilization of Turkish troops necessitated the
removal of Bahá’u’lláh and all who bore Him company from the
barracks. He and His family were accordingly assigned the house of
Malik, in the western quarter of the city, whence, after a brief stay
of three months, they were moved by the authorities to the house of
Khavvám which faced it, and from which, after a few months,
they were again obliged to take up new quarters in the house of
Rábi‘ih, being finally transferred, four months later, to the
house of ‘Údí Khammár, which was so insufficient to their
needs that in one of its rooms no less than thirteen persons of both
sexes had to accommodate themselves. Some of the companions had to
take up their residence in other houses, while the remainder were
consigned to a caravanserai named the Khán-i-‘Avámíd.
Their strict confinement had hardly been mitigated, and the guards
who had kept watch over them been dismissed, when an internal crisis,
which had been brewing in the midst of the community, was brought to
a sudden and catastrophic climax. Such had been the conduct of two of
the exiles, who had been included in the party that accompanied
Bahá’u’lláh to ‘Akká, that He was eventually forced to expel
them, an act of which Siyyid Muḥammad did not hesitate to take the
fullest advantage. Reinforced by these recruits, he, together with
his old associates, acting as spies, embarked on a campaign of abuse,
calumny and intrigue, even more pernicious than that which had been
launched by him in Constantinople, calculated to arouse an already
prejudiced and suspicious populace to a new pitch of animosity and
excitement. A fresh danger now clearly threatened the life of
Bahá’u’lláh. Though He Himself had stringently forbidden His
followers, on several occasions, both verbally and in writing, any
retaliatory acts against their tormentors, and had even sent back to
Beirut an irresponsible Arab convert, who had meditated avenging the
wrongs suffered by his beloved Leader, seven of the companions
clandestinely sought out and slew three of their persecutors, among
whom were Siyyid Muḥammad and Áqá Ján.
The consternation that seized an already oppressed community was
indescribable. Bahá’u’lláh’s indignation knew no bounds.
“Were We,”
He thus voices His emotions, in a Tablet
revealed shortly after this act had been committed, “to make
mention of what befell Us, the heavens would be rent asunder and the
mountains would crumble.”
“My captivity,”
He wrote
on another occasion, “cannot harm Me. That which can harm Me is
the conduct of those who love Me, who claim to be related to Me, and
yet perpetrate what causeth My heart and My pen to groan.”
And
again: “My captivity can bring on Me no shame. Nay, by My life,
it conferreth on Me glory. That which can make Me ashamed is the
conduct of such of My followers as profess to love Me, yet in fact
follow the Evil One.”
He was dictating His Tablets to His amanuensis when the governor, at
the head of his troops, with drawn swords, surrounded His house. The
entire populace, as well as the military authorities, were in a state
of great agitation. The shouts and clamor of the people could be
heard on all sides. Bahá’u’lláh was peremptorily summoned to
the Governorate, interrogated, kept in custody the first night, with
one of His sons, in a chamber in the Khán-i-Shávirdí,
transferred for the following two nights to better quarters in that
neighborhood, and allowed only after the lapse of seventy hours to
regain His home. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was thrown into prison and
chained during the first night, after which He was permitted to join
His Father. Twenty-five of the companions were cast into another
prison and shackled, all of whom, except those responsible for that
odious deed, whose imprisonment lasted several years, were, after six
days, moved to the Khán-i-Shávirdí, and there
placed, for six months, under confinement.
“Is it proper,” the Commandant of the city, turning to
Bahá’u’lláh, after He had arrived at the Governorate, boldly
inquired, “that some of your followers should act in such a
manner?” “If one of your soldiers,”
was the swift
rejoinder, “were to commit a reprehensible act, would you be
held responsible, and be punished in his place?”
When
interrogated, He was asked to state His name and that of the country
from which He came. “It is more manifest than the sun,”
He
answered. The same question was put to Him again, to which He gave
the following reply: “I deem it not proper to mention it. Refer
to the farmán of the government which is in your possession.”
Once again they, with marked deference, reiterated their request,
whereupon Bahá’u’lláh spoke with majesty and power these words:
“My name is Bahá’u’lláh (Light of God), and My
country is Núr (Light). Be ye apprized of it.”
Turning
then, to the Muftí, He addressed him words of veiled rebuke, after
which He spoke to the entire gathering, in such vehement and exalted
language that none made bold to answer Him. Having quoted verses from
the Súriy-i-Mulúk, He, afterwards, arose and left the gathering.
The Governor, soon after, sent word that He was at liberty to return
to His home, and apologized for what had occurred.
A population, already ill-disposed towards the exiles, was, after
such an incident, fired with uncontrollable animosity for all those
who bore the name of the Faith which those exiles professed. The
charges of impiety, atheism, terrorism and heresy were openly and
without restraint flung into their faces. ‘Abbúd, who lived next
door to Bahá’u’lláh, reinforced the partition that separated
his house from the dwelling of his now much-feared and suspected
Neighbor. Even the children of the imprisoned exiles, whenever they
ventured to show themselves in the streets during those days, would
be pursued, vilified and pelted with stones.
The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s tribulations was now filled to
overflowing. A situation, greatly humiliating, full of anxieties and
even perilous, continued to face the exiles, until the time, set by
an inscrutable Will, at which the tide of misery and abasement began
to ebb, signalizing a transformation in the fortunes of the Faith
even more conspicuous than the revolutionary change effected during
the latter years of Bahá’u’lláh’s sojourn in Baghdád.
Gradual relaxation of His restrictions imposed upon Him
The gradual recognition by all elements of the population of
Bahá’u’lláh’s complete innocence; the slow penetration of the
true of His teachings through the hard crust of their
indifference and bigotry; the substitution of the sagacious and
humane governor, Aḥmad Big Tawfíq, for one whose mind had been
hopelessly poisoned against the Faith and its followers; the
unremitting labors of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, now in the full flower
of His manhood, Who, through His contacts with the rank and file of
the population, was increasingly demonstrating His capacity to act as
the shield of His Father; the providential dismissal of the officials
who had been instrumental in prolonging the confinement of the
innocent companions — all paved the way for the reaction that was now
setting in, a reaction with which the period of Bahá’u’lláh’s
banishment to ‘Akká will ever remain indissolubly associated.
Such was the devotion gradually kindled in the heart of that
governor, through his association with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and
later through his perusal of the literature of the Faith, which
mischief-makers, in the hope of angering him, had submitted for his
consideration, that he invariably refused to enter His presence
without first removing his shoes, as a token of his respect for Him.
It was even bruited about that his favored counselors were those very
exiles who were the followers of the Prisoner in his custody. His own
son he was wont to send to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for instruction
and enlightenment. It was on the occasion of a long-sought audience
with Bahá’u’lláh that, in response to a request for permission
to render Him some service, the suggestion was made to him to restore
the aqueduct which for thirty years had been allowed to fall into
disuse — a suggestion which he immediately arose to carry out. To the
inflow of pilgrims, among whom were numbered the devout and venerable
Mullá Ṣádiq-i-Khurásání and the father of Badí‘, both
survivors of the struggle of Ṭabarsí, he offered scarcely any
opposition, though the text of the imperial farmán forbade their
admission into the city. Muṣṭafá Ḍíyí Páshá, who
became governor a few years later, had even gone so far as to
intimate that his Prisoner was free to pass through its gates
whenever He pleased, a suggestion which Bahá’u’lláh declined.
Even the Muftí of ‘Akká, Shaykh Maḥmúd, a man
notorious for his bigotry, had been converted to the Faith, and,
fired by his newborn enthusiasm, made a compilation of the Muḥammadan
traditions related to ‘Akká. Nor were the occasionally
unsympathetic governors, despatched to that city, able, despite the
arbitrary power they wielded, to check the forces which were carrying
the Author of the Faith towards His virtual emancipation and the
ultimate accomplishment of His purpose. Men of letters, and even
‘ulamás residing in Syria, were moved, as the years rolled by, to
voice their recognition of Bahá’u’lláh’s rising greatness and
power. ‘Azíz Páshá, who, in Adrianople, had evinced a
profound attachment to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and had in the
meantime been promoted to the rank of Válí, twice visited ‘Akká
for the express purpose of paying his respects to Bahá’u’lláh,
and to renew his friendship with One Whom he had learned to admire
and revere.
Though Bahá’u’lláh Himself practically never granted personal
interviews, as He had been used to do in Baghdád, yet such
was the influence He now wielded that the inhabitants openly asserted
that the noticeable improvement in the climate and water of their
city was directly attributable to His continued presence in their
midst. The very designations by which they chose to refer to him,
such as the “august leader,” and “his highness” bespoke the
reverence with which He inspired them. On one occasion, a European
general who, together with the governor, was granted an audience by
Him, was so impressed that he “remained kneeling on the ground near
the door.” Shaykh ‘Alíy-i-Mírí, the Muftí of
‘Akká, had even, at the suggestion of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, to
plead insistently that He might permit the termination of His
nine-year confinement within the walls of the prison-city, before He
would consent to leave its gates. The garden of Na‘mayn, a small
island, situated in the middle of a river to the east of the city,
honored with the appellation of Riḍván, and designated by Him the
“New Jerusalem”
and “Our Verdant Isle,”
had,
together with the residence of ‘Abdu’lláh Páshá, — rented
and prepared for Him by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and situated a few
miles north of ‘Akká — become by now the favorite retreats of One
Who, for almost a decade, had not set foot beyond the city walls, and
Whose sole exercise had been to pace, in monotonous repetition, the
floor of His bed-chamber.
Two years later the palace of ‘Údí Khammár, on the
construction of which so much wealth had been lavished, while
Bahá’u’lláh lay imprisoned in the barracks, and which its owner
had precipitately abandoned with his family owing to the outbreak of
an epidemic disease, was rented and later purchased for Him — a
dwelling-place which He characterized as the “lofty mansion,”
the spot which “God hath ordained as the most sublime vision of
mankind.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to Beirut, at the
invitation of Midḥat Páshá, a former Grand Vizir of
Turkey, occurring about this time; His association with the civil and
ecclesiastical leaders of that city; His several interviews with the
well-known Shaykh Muḥammad ‘Abdu served to enhance
immensely the growing prestige of the community and spread abroad the
fame of its most distinguished member. The splendid welcome accorded
him by the learned and highly esteemed Shaykh Yúsuf,
the Muftí of Nazareth, who acted as host to the válís of Beirut,
and who had despatched all the notables of the community several
miles on the road to meet Him as He approached the town, accompanied
by His brother and the Muftí of ‘Akká, as well as the magnificent
reception given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to that same Shaykh
Yúsuf when the latter visited Him in ‘Akká, were such as to
arouse the envy of those who, only a few years before, had treated
Him and His fellow-exiles with feelings compounded of condescension
and scorn.
The drastic farmán of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, though
officially unrepealed, had by now become a dead letter. Though
“Bahá’u’lláh was still nominally a prisoner, “the doors
of majesty and true sovereignty were,”
in the words of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “flung wide open.”
“The
rulers of Palestine,”
He moreover has written, “envied His
influence and power. Governors and mutiṣarrifs, generals and local
officials, would humbly request the honor of attaining His presence — a
request to which He seldom acceded.”
It was in that same mansion that the distinguished Orientalist, Prof.
E. G. Browne of Cambridge, was granted his four successive interviews
with Bahá’u’lláh, during the five days he was His guest at
Bahjí (April 15–20, 1890), interviews immortalized by the Exile’s
historic declaration that “these fruitless strifes, these
ruinous wars shall pass away and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall
come.”
“The face of Him on Whom I gazed,” is the
interviewer’s memorable testimony for posterity, “I can never
forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes seemed to
read one’s very soul; power and authority sat on that ample brow.…
No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself before
one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might envy
and emperors sigh for in vain.” “Here,” the visitor himself has
testified, “did I spend five most memorable days, during which I
enjoyed unparalleled and unhoped-for opportunities of holding
intercourse with those who are the fountain-heads of that mighty and
wondrous spirit, which works with invisible but ever-increasing force
for the transformation and quickening of a people who slumber in a
sleep like unto death. It was, in truth, a strange and moving
experience, but one whereof I despair of conveying any save the
feeblest impression.”
In that same year Bahá’u’lláh’s tent, the “Tabernacle of
Glory,”
was raised on Mt. Carmel, “the Hill of God and His
Vineyard,”
the home of Elijah, extolled by Isaiah as the
“mountain of the Lord,”
to which “all nations shall
flow.”
Four times He visited Haifa, His last visit being no
less than three months long. In the course of one of these visits,
when His tent was pitched in the vicinity of the Carmelite Monastery,
He, the “Lord of the Vineyard,”
revealed the Tablet of
Carmel, remarkable for its allusions and prophecies. On another
occasion He pointed out Himself to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as He
stood on the slopes of that mountain, the site which was to serve as
the permanent resting-place of the Báb, and on which a befitting
mausoleum was later to be erected.
Properties, bordering on the Lake associated with the ministry of
Jesus Christ, were, moreover, purchased at Bahá’u’lláh’s
bidding, designed to be consecrated to the glory of His Faith, and to
be the forerunners of those “noble and imposing structures”
which He, in His Tablets, had anticipated would be raised “throughout
the length and breadth”
of the Holy Land, as well as of the
“rich and sacred territories adjoining the Jordan and its
vicinity,”
which, in those Tablets, He had permitted to be
dedicated “to the worship and service of the one true God.”
The enormous expansion in the volume of Bahá’u’lláh’s
correspondence; the establishment of a Bahá’í agency in
Alexandria for its despatch and distribution; the facilities provided
by His staunch follower, Muḥammad Muṣṭafá, now established in
Beirut to safeguard the interests of the pilgrims who passed through
that city; the comparative ease with which a titular Prisoner
communicated with the multiplying centers in Persia, ‘Iráq,
Caucasus, Turkistán, and Egypt; the mission entrusted by Him to
Sulaymán Khán-i-Tanakábuní, known as Jamál Effendi, to
initiate a systematic campaign of teaching in India and Burma; the
appointment of a few of His followers as “Hands of the Cause of
God”
; the restoration of the Holy House in Shíráz,
whose custodianship was now formally entrusted by Him to the Báb’s
wife and her sister; the conversion of a considerable number of the
adherents of the Jewish, Zoroastrian and Buddhist Faiths, the first
fruits of the zeal and the perseverance which itinerant teachers in
Persia, India and Burma were so strikingly displaying — conversions
that automatically resulted in a firm recognition by them of the
Divine origin of both Christianity and Islám — all these attested
the vitality of a leadership that neither kings nor ecclesiastics,
however powerful or antagonistic, could either destroy or undermine.
Nor should reference be omitted to the emergence of a prosperous
community in the newly laid out city of ‘Ishqábád, in
Russian Turkistán, assured of the good will of a sympathetic
government, enabling it to establish a Bahá’í cemetery and to
purchase property and erect thereon structures that were to prove the
precursors of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the
Bahá’í world; or to the establishment of new outposts of the
Faith in far-off Samarqand and Bukhárá, in the heart of the
Asiatic continent, in consequence of the discourses and writings of
the erudite Fáḍil-i-Qá’iní and the learned apologist Mírzá
Abu’l-Faḍl; or to the publication in India of five volumes of the
writings of the Author of the Faith, including His “Most Holy
Book” — publications which were to herald the vast multiplication
of its literature, in various scripts and languages, and its
dissemination, in later decades, throughout both the East and the
West.
“Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz,”
Bahá’u’lláh is
reported by one of His fellow-exiles to have stated, “banished
Us to this country in the greatest abasement, and since his object
was to destroy Us and humble Us, whenever the means of glory and ease
presented themselves, We did not reject them.”
“Now,
praise be to God,”
He, moreover, as reported by Nabíl in his
narrative, once remarked, “it has reached the point when all the
people of these regions are manifesting their submissiveness unto
Us.”
And again, as recorded in that same narrative: “The
Ottoman Sulṭán, without any justification, or reason, arose to
oppress Us, and sent Us to the fortress of ‘Akká. His imperial
farmán decreed that none should associate with Us, and that We
should become the object of the hatred of every one. The Hand of
Divine power, therefore, swiftly avenged Us. It first loosed the
winds of destruction upon his two irreplaceable ministers and
confidants, ‘Alí and Fu’ád, after which that Hand was stretched
out to roll up the panoply of ‘Azíz himself, and to seize him, as
He only can seize, Who is the Mighty, the Strong.”
“His enemies,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, referring to this
same theme, has written, “intended that His imprisonment should
completely destroy and annihilate the blessed Cause, but this prison
was, in reality, of the greatest assistance, and became the means of
its development.”
“…This illustrious Being,”
He,
moreover has affirmed, “uplifted His Cause in the Most Great
Prison. From this Prison His light was shed abroad; His fame
conquered the world, and the proclamation of His glory reached the
East and the West.”
“His light at first had been a star;
now it became a mighty sun.”
“Until our time,”
He,
moreover has affirmed, “no such thing has ever occurred.”
Little wonder that, in view of so remarkable a reversal in the
circumstances attending the twenty-four years of His banishment to
‘Akká, Bahá’u’lláh Himself should have penned these weighty
words: “The Almighty … hath transformed this Prison-House into
the Most Exalted Paradise, the Heaven of Heavens.”
While Bahá’u’lláh and the little band that bore Him company
were being subjected to the severe hardships of a banishment intended
to blot them from the face of the earth, the steadily expanding
community of His followers in the land of His birth were undergoing a
persecution more violent and of longer duration than the trials with
which He and His companions were being afflicted. Though on a far
smaller scale than the blood baths which had baptized the birth of
the Faith, when in the course of a single year, as attested by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “more than four thousand souls were
slain, and a great multitude of women and children left without
protector and helper,”
the murderous and horrible acts
subsequently perpetrated by an insatiable and unyielding enemy
covered as wide a range and were marked by an even greater degree of
ferocity.
Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, stigmatized by Bahá’u’lláh as
the “Prince of Oppressors,”
as one who had “perpetrated
what hath caused the denizens of the cities of justice and equity to
lament,”
was, during the period under review, in the full tide
of his manhood and had reached the plenitude of his despotic power.
The sole arbiter of the fortunes of a country “firmly stereotyped
in the immemorial traditions of the East”; surrounded by “venal,
artful and false” ministers whom he could elevate or abase at his
pleasure; the head of an administration in which “every actor was,
in different aspects, both the briber and the bribed”; allied, in
his opposition to the Faith, with a sacerdotal order which
constituted a veritable “church-state”; supported by a people
preeminent in atrocity, notorious for its fanaticism, its servility,
cupidity and corrupt practices, this capricious monarch, no longer
able to lay hands upon the person of Bahá’u’lláh, had to
content himself with the task of attempting to stamp out in his own
dominions the remnants of a much-feared and newly resuscitated
community. Next to him in rank and power were his three eldest sons,
to whom, for purposes of internal administration, he had practically
delegated his authority, and in whom he had invested the governorship
of all the provinces of his kingdom. The province of Ádhirbáyján
he had entrusted to the weak and timid Muẓaffari’d-Dín Mírzá,
the heir to his throne, who had fallen under the influence of the
Shaykhí sect, and was showing a marked respect to the
mullás. To the stern and savage rule of the astute Mas‘úd Mírzá,
commonly known as Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán, his eldest surviving son,
whose mother had been of plebeian origin, he had committed over
two-fifths of his kingdom, including the provinces of Yazd and
Iṣfahán, whilst upon Kámrán Mírzá, his favorite son, commonly
called by his title the Náyibu’s-Salṭanih, he had bestowed the
rulership of Gílán and Mázindarán, and made him governor of
Ṭihrán, his minister of war and the commander-in-chief of his
army. Such was the rivalry between the last two princes, who vied
with each other in courting the favor of their father, that each
endeavored, with the support of the leading mujtahids within his
jurisdiction, to outshine the other in the meritorious task of
hunting, plundering and exterminating the members of a defenseless
community, who, at the bidding of Bahá’u’lláh, had ceased to
offer armed resistance even in self-defense, and were carrying out
His injunction that “it is better to be killed than kill.”
Nor were the clerical firebrands, Ḥájí Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Kaní
and Siyyid Ṣádiq-i-Ṭabáṭabá’í, the two leading mujtahids
of Ṭihrán, together with Shaykh Muḥammad-Báqir,
their colleague in Iṣfahán, and Mír Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, the
Imám-Jum‘ih of that city, willing to allow the slightest
opportunity to pass without striking, with all the force and
authority they wielded, at an adversary whose liberalizing influences
they had even more reason to fear than the sovereign himself.
Little wonder that, confronted by a situation so full of peril, the
Faith should have been driven underground, and that arrests,
interrogations, imprisonment, vituperation, spoliation, tortures and
executions should constitute the outstanding features of this
convulsive period in its development. The pilgrimages that had been
initiated in Adrianople, and which later assumed in ‘Akká
impressive proportions, together with the dissemination of the
Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh and the circulation of enthusiastic
reports through the medium of those who had attained His presence
served, moreover, to inflame the animosity of clergy and laity alike,
who had foolishly imagined that the breach which had occurred in the
ranks of the followers of the Faith in Adrianople and the sentence of
life banishment pronounced subsequently against its Leader, would
seal irretrievably its fate.
Fresh outbreak of persecutions in Persia
In Ábádih a certain Ustád ‘Alí-Akbar was, at the instigation of
a local Siyyid, apprehended and so ruthlessly thrashed that he was
covered from head to foot with his own blood. In the village of
Tákur, at the bidding of the Sháh, the property of the
inhabitants was pillaged, Ḥájí Mírzá Riḍá-Qulí, a
half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh, was arrested, conducted to the
capital and thrown into the Síyáh-Chál, where he remained
for a month, whilst the brother-in-law of Mírzá Ḥasan, another
half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh, was seized and branded with
red-hot irons, after which the neighboring village of Dár-Kalá was
delivered to the flames.
Áqá Buzurg of Khurásán, the illustrious “Badí‘”
(Wonderful); converted to the Faith by Nabíl; surnamed the “Pride
of Martyrs”; the seventeen-year old bearer of the Tablet addressed
to Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh; in whom, as affirmed by
Bahá’u’lláh, “the spirit of might and power was breathed,”
was arrested, branded for three successive days, his head beaten to a
pulp with the butt of a rifle, after which his body was thrown into a
pit and earth and stones heaped upon it. After visiting Bahá’u’lláh
in the barracks, during the second year of His confinement, he had
arisen with amazing alacrity to carry that Tablet, alone and on foot,
to Ṭihrán and deliver it into the hands of the sovereign. A four
months’ journey had taken him to that city, and, after passing
three days in fasting and vigilance, he had met the Sháh
proceeding on a hunting expedition to Shimírán. He had
calmly and respectfully approached His Majesty, calling out, “O
King! I have come to thee from Sheba with a weighty message”;
whereupon at the Sovereign’s order, the Tablet was taken from him
and delivered to the mujtahids of Ṭihrán who were commanded to
reply to that Epistle — a command which they evaded, recommending
instead that the messenger should be put to death. That Tablet was
subsequently forwarded by the Sháh to the Persian Ambassador
in Constantinople, in the hope that its perusal by the Sulṭán’s
ministers might serve to further inflame their animosity. For a space
of three years Bahá’u’lláh continued to extol in His writings
the heroism of that youth, characterizing the references made by Him
to that sublime sacrifice as the “salt of My Tablets.”
Abá-Baṣír and Siyyid Ashraf, whose fathers had been slain
in the struggle of Zanján, were decapitated on the same day in that
city, the former going so far as to instruct, while kneeling in
prayer, his executioner as to how best to deal his blow, while the
latter, after having been so brutally beaten that blood flowed from
under his nails, was beheaded, as he held in his arms the body of his
martyred companion. It was the mother of this same Ashraf who,
when sent to the prison in the hope that she would persuade her only
son to recant, had warned him that she would disown him were he to
denounce his faith, had bidden him follow the example of Abá-Baṣír,
and had even watched him expire with eyes undimmed with tears. The
wealthy and prominent Muḥammad-Ḥasan Khán-i-Káshí
was so mercilessly bastinadoed in Burújird that he succumbed to his
ordeal. In Shíráz Mírzá Áqáy-i-Rikáb-Sáz, together
with Mírzá Rafí‘-i-Khayyáṭ and Mashhadí Nabí,
were by order of the local mujtahid simultaneously strangled in the
dead of night, their graves being later desecrated by a mob who
heaped refuse upon them. Shaykh Abu’l-Qásim-i-Mázkání
in Káshán, who had declined a drink of water that was
offered him before his death, affirming that he thirsted for the cup
of martyrdom, was dealt a fatal blow on the nape of his neck, whilst
he was prostrating himself in prayer.
Mírzá Báqir-i-Shírází, who had transcribed the Tablets
of Bahá’u’lláh in Adrianople with such unsparing devotion, was
slain in Kirmán, while in Ardikán the aged and infirm Gul-Muḥammad
was set upon by a furious mob, thrown to the ground, and so trampled
upon by the hob-nailed boots of two siyyids that his ribs were
crushed in and his teeth broken, after which his body was taken to
the outskirts of the town and buried in a pit, only to be dug up the
next day, dragged through the streets, and finally abandoned in the
wilderness. In the city of Mashhad, notorious for its
unbridled fanaticism, Ḥájí ‘Abdu’l-Majíd, who was the
eighty-five year old father of the afore-mentioned Badí‘ and a
survivor of the struggle of Ṭabarsí, and who, after the martyrdom
of his son, had visited Bahá’u’lláh and returned afire with
zeal to Khurásán, was ripped open from waist to throat, and
his head exposed on a marble slab to the gaze of a multitude of
insulting onlookers, who, after dragging his body ignominiously
through the bazaars, left it at the morgue to be claimed by his
relatives.
In Iṣfahán Mullá Káẓim was beheaded by order of Shaykh
Muḥammad-Báqir, and a horse made to gallop over his corpse, which
was then delivered to the flames, while Siyyid Áqá Ján had his
ears cut off, and was led by a halter through the streets and
bazaars. A month later occurred in that same city the tragedy of the
two famous brothers Mírzá Muḥammad-Ḥasan and Mírzá
Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, the “twin shining lights,” respectively
surnamed “Sulṭánu’sh-Shuhadá” (King of
Martyrs) and “Maḥbúbu’sh-Shuhadá” (Beloved of
Martyrs), who were celebrated for their generosity, trustworthiness,
kindliness and piety. Their martyrdom was instigated by the wicked
and dishonest Mír Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, the Imám-Jum‘ih,
stigmatized by Bahá’u’lláh as the “she-serpent,” who, in
view of a large debt he had incurred in his transactions with them,
schemed to nullify his obligations by denouncing them as Bábís, and
thereby encompassing their death. Their richly-furnished houses were
plundered, even to the trees and flowers in their gardens, all their
remaining possessions were confiscated; Shaykh
Muḥammad-Báqir, denounced by Bahá’u’lláh as the “wolf,”
pronounced their death-sentence; the Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán ratified
the decision, after which they were put in chains, decapitated,
dragged to the Maydán-i-Sháh, and there exposed to the
indignities heaped upon them by a degraded and rapacious populace.
“In such wise,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written, “was
the blood of these two brothers shed that the Christian priest of
Julfá cried out, lamented and wept on that day.”
For several
years Bahá’u’lláh in His Tablets continued to make mention of
them, to voice His grief over their passing and to extol their
virtues.
Mullá ‘Alí Ján was conducted on foot from Mázindarán to
Ṭihrán, the hardships of that journey being so severe that his
neck was wounded and his body swollen from the waist to the feet. On
the day of his martyrdom he asked for water, performed his ablutions,
recited his prayers, bestowed a considerable gift of money on his
executioner, and was still in the act of prayer when his throat was
slit by a dagger, after which his corpse was spat upon, covered with
mud, left exposed for three days, and finally hewn to pieces. In
Námiq Mullá ‘Alí, converted to the Faith in the days of the Báb,
was so severely attacked and his ribs so badly broken with a pick-axe
that he died immediately. Mírzá Ashraf was slain in Iṣfahán,
his corpse trampled under foot by Shaykh Muḥammad
Taqíy-i-Najafí, the “son of the wolf,” and his pupils, savagely
mutilated, and delivered to the mob to be burnt, after which his
charred bones were buried beneath the ruins of a wall that was pulled
down to cover them.
In Yazd, at the instigation of the mujtahid of that city, and by
order of the callous Maḥmúd Mírzá, the Jalúlu’l-Dawlih, the
governor, a son of Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán, seven were done to death in
a single day in horrible circumstances. The first of these, a
twenty-seven year old youth, ‘Alí-Aṣghar, was strangled,
his body delivered into the hands of some Jews who, forcing the dead
man’s six companions to come with them, dragged the corpse through
the streets, surrounded by a mob of people and soldiers beating drums
and blowing trumpets, after which, arriving near the Telegraph
Office, they beheaded the eighty-five year old Mullá Mihdí and
dragged him in the same manner to another quarter of the city, where,
in view of a great throng of onlookers, frenzied by the throbbing
strains of the music, they executed Áqá ‘Alí in like manner.
Proceeding thence to the house of the local mujtahid, and carrying
with them the four remaining companions, they cut the throat of Mullá
‘Alíy-i-Sabzivárí, who had been addressing the crowd and
glorying in his imminent martyrdom, hacked his body to pieces with a
spade, while he was still alive, and pounded his skull to a pulp with
stones. In another quarter, near the Mihríz gate, they slew
Muḥammad-Báqir, and afterwards, in the Maydán-i-Khán, as
the music grew wilder and drowned the yells of the people, they
beheaded the survivors who remained, two brothers in their early
twenties, ‘Alí-Aṣghar and Muḥammad-Ḥasan. The stomach
of the latter was ripped open and his heart and liver plucked out,
after which his head was impaled on a spear, carried aloft, to the
accompaniment of music, through the streets of the city, and
suspended on a mulberry tree, and stoned by a great concourse of
people. His body was cast before the door of his mother’s house,
into which women deliberately entered to dance and make merry. Even
pieces of their flesh were carried away to be used as a medicament.
Finally, the head of Muḥammad-Ḥasan was attached to the lower
part of his body and, together with those of the other martyrs, was
borne to the outskirts of the city and so viciously pelted with
stones that the skulls were broken, whereupon they compelled the Jews
to carry the remains and throw them into a pit in the plain of
Salsabíl. A holiday was declared by the governor for the people, all
the shops were closed by his order, the city was illuminated at
night, and festivities proclaimed the consummation of one of the most
barbarous acts perpetrated in modern times.
Nor were the Jews and the Pársís who had been newly converted to the
Faith, and were living, the former in Hamadán, and the latter in
Yazd, immune to the assaults of enemies whose fury was exasperated by
the evidences of the penetration of the light of the Faith in
quarters they had fondly imagined to be beyond its reach. Even in the
city of ‘Ishqábád the newly established Shí‘ah
community, envious of the rising prestige of the followers of
Bahá’u’lláh who were living in their midst, instigated two
ruffians to assault the seventy-year old Ḥájí
Muḥammad-Riḍáy-i-Iṣfahání, whom, in broad day and in the
midst of the bazaar, they stabbed in no less than thirty-two places,
exposing his liver, lacerating his stomach and tearing open his
breast. A military court dispatched by the Czar to ‘Ishqábád
established, after prolonged investigation, the guilt of the Shí‘ahs,
sentencing two to death and banishing six others — a sentence which
neither Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, nor the ‘ulamás of
Ṭihrán, of Mashhad and of Tabríz, who were appealed to,
could mitigate, but which the representatives of the aggrieved
community, through their magnanimous intercession which greatly
surprised the Russian authorities, succeeded in having commuted to a
lighter punishment.
Such are some typical examples of the treatment meted out by the
adversaries of the Faith to the newly resurgent community of its
followers during the period of Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to
‘Akká — a treatment which it may be truly said testified
alternately to “the callousness of the brute and the ingenuity of
the fiend.”
The “inquisition and appalling tortures,” following the attempt
on the life of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, had already, in the
words of no less eminent an observer than Lord Curzon of Kedleston,
imparted to the Faith “a vitality which no other impulse could have
secured.” This recrudescence of persecution, this fresh outpouring
of the blood of martyrs, served to further enliven the roots which
that holy Sapling had already struck in its native soil. Careless of
the policy of fire and blood which aimed at their annihilation,
undismayed by the tragic blows rained upon a Leader so far removed
from their midst, uncorrupted by the foul and seditious acts
perpetrated by the Arch-Breaker of the Báb’s Covenant, the
followers of Bahá’u’lláh were multiplying in number and
silently gathering the necessary strength that was to enable them, at
a later stage, to lift their heads in freedom, and rear the fabric of
their institutions.
Soon after his visit to Persia in the autumn of 1889 Lord Curzon of
Kedleston wrote, in the course of references designed to dispel the
“great confusion” and “error” prevailing “among European
and specially English writers” regarding the Faith, that “the
Bahá’ís are now believed to comprise nineteen-twentieths of the
Bábí persuasion.” Count Gobineau, writing as far back as the year
1865, testified as follows: “L’opinion générale est que les
Bábís sont répandus dans toutes les classes de la population et
parmi tous les religionnaires de la Perse, sauf les Nuṣayrís et
les Chrétiens; mais ce sont surtout les classes éclairées, les
hommes pratiquant les sciences du pays, qui sont donnés comme très
suspects. On pense, et avec raison, ce semble, que beaucoup de
mullás, et parmi eux des mujtahids considérables, des magistrats
d’un rang élevé, des hommes qui occupent à la cour des fonctions
importantes et qui approchent de près la personne du Roi, sont des
Bábís. D’après un calcul fait récemment, il y aurait a Ṭihrán
cinq milles de ces religionnaires sur une population de quatre-vingt
milles âmes a peu près.” Furthermore: “…Le Bábisme a pris
une action considérable sur l’intelligence de la nation persane,
et, se rependant même au delâ des limites du territoire, il a
débordé dans le pachalik de Baghdád, et passé aussi dans
l’Inde.” And again: “…Un mouvement religieux tout particulier
dont l’Asie Centrale, c’est-à-dire la Perse, quelques points de
l’Inde et une partie de la Turquie d’Asie, aux environs de
Baghdád, est aujourd’hui vivement préoccupée, mouvement
remarquable et digne d’être étudié à tous les titres. Il permet
d’assister à des développements de faits, à des manifestations,
à des catastrophes telles que l’on n’est pas habitué à les
imaginer ailleurs que dans les temps reculés où se sont produites
les grandes religions.”
“These changes, however,” Lord Curzon, alluding to the
Declaration of the Mission of Bahá’u’lláh and the rebellion of
Mírzá Yaḥyá, has, moreover written, “have in no wise impaired,
but appear on the contrary, to have stimulated its propaganda, which
has advanced with a rapidity inexplicable to those who can only see
therein a crude form of political or even of metaphysical
fermentation. The lowest estimate places the present number of Bábís
in Persia at half a million. I am disposed to think, from
conversations with persons well qualified to judge, that the total is
nearer one million.” “They are to be found,” he adds, “in
every walk of life, from the ministers and nobles of the Court to the
scavenger or the groom, not the least arena of their activity being
the Musulmán priesthood itself.” “From the facts,” is another
testimony of his, “that Bábism in its earliest years found itself
in conflict with the civil powers, and that an attempt was made by
Bábís upon the life of the Sháh, it has been wrongly
inferred that the movement was political in origin and Nihilist in
character … At the present time the Bábís are equally loyal with
any other subjects of the Crown. Nor does there appear to be any
greater justice in the charges of socialism, communism and immorality
that have so freely been levelled at the youthful persuasion … The
only communism known to and recommended by Him (the Báb) was that of
the New Testament and the early Christian Church, viz., the sharing
of goods in common by members of the Faith, and the exercise of
alms-giving, and an ample charity. The charge of immorality seems to
have arisen partly from the malignant inventions of opponents, partly
from the much greater freedom claimed for women by the Báb, which in
the oriental mind is scarcely dissociable from profligacy of
conduct.” And, finally, the following prognostication from his pen:
“If Bábism continues to grow at its present rate of progression, a
time may conceivably come when it will oust Muḥammadanism from the
field in Persia. This, I think, it would be unlikely to do, did it
appear upon the ground under the flag of a hostile faith. But since
its recruits are won from the best soldiers of the garrison whom it
is attacking, there is greater reason to believe that it may
ultimately prevail.”
Bahá’u’lláh’s incarceration in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká,
the manifold tribulations He endured, the prolonged ordeal to which
the community of His followers in Persia was being subjected, did not
arrest, nor could they even impede, to the slightest degree, the
mighty stream of Divine Revelation, which, without interruption, had
been flowing from His pen, and on which the future orientation, the
integrity, the expansion and the consolidation of His Faith directly
depended. Indeed, in their scope and volume, His writings, during the
years of His confinement in the Most Great Prison, surpassed the
outpourings of His pen in either Adrianople or Baghdád. More
remarkable than the radical transformation in the circumstances of
His own life in ‘Akká, more far-reaching in its spiritual
consequences than the campaign of repression pursued so relentlessly
by the enemies of His Faith in the land of His birth, this
unprecedented extension in the range of His writings, during His
exile in that Prison, must rank as one of the most vitalizing and
fruitful stages in the evolution of His Faith.
The tempestuous winds that swept the Faith at the inception of His
ministry and the wintry desolation that marked the beginnings of His
prophetic career, soon after His banishment from Ṭihrán, were
followed during the latter part of His sojourn in Baghdád, by
what may be described as the vernal years of His Mission — years
which witnessed the bursting into visible activity of the forces
inherent in that Divine Seed that had lain dormant since the tragic
removal of His Forerunner. With His arrival in Adrianople and the
proclamation of His Mission the Orb of His Revelation climbed as it
were to its zenith, and shone, as witnessed by the style and tone of
His writings, in the plenitude of its summer glory. The period of His
incarceration in ‘Akká brought with it the ripening of a slowly
maturing process, and was a period during which the choicest fruits
of that mission were ultimately garnered.
Sequel to the Proclamation of His mission in Adrianople
The writings of Bahá’u’lláh during this period, as we survey
the vast field which they embrace, seem to fall into three distinct
categories. The first comprises those writings which constitute the
sequel to the proclamation of His Mission in Adrianople. The second
includes the laws and ordinances of His Dispensation, which, for the
most part, have been recorded in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy
Book. To the third must be assigned those Tablets which partly
enunciate and partly reaffirm the fundamental tenets and principles
underlying that Dispensation.
The Proclamation of His Mission had been, as already observed,
directed particularly to the kings of the earth, who, by virtue of
the power and authority they wielded, were invested with a peculiar
and inescapable responsibility for the destinies of their subjects.
It was to these kings, as well as to the world’s religious leaders,
who exercised a no less pervasive influence on the mass of their
followers, that the Prisoner of ‘Akká directed His appeals,
warnings, and exhortations during the first years of His
incarceration in that city. “Upon Our arrival at this Prison,”
He Himself affirms, “We purposed to transmit to the kings the
messages of their Lord, the Mighty, the All-Praised. Though We have
transmitted to them, in several Tablets, that which We were
commanded, yet We do it once again, as a token of God’s grace.”
To the kings of the earth, both in the East and in the West, both
Christian and Muslim, who had already been collectively admonished
and warned in the Súriy-i-Mulúk revealed in Adrianople, and had
been so vehemently summoned by the Báb, in the opening chapter of
the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, on the very night of the Declaration of
His Mission, Bahá’u’lláh, during the darkest days of His
confinement in ‘Akká, addressed some of the noblest passages of
His Most Holy Book. In these passages He called upon them to take
fast hold of the “Most Great Law”
; proclaimed Himself to
be “the King of Kings”
and “the Desire of all
Nations”
; declared them to be His “vassals”
and
“emblems of His sovereignty”
; disclaimed any intention of
laying hands on their kingdoms; bade them forsake their palaces, and
hasten to gain admittance into His Kingdom; extolled the king who
would arise to aid His Cause as “the very eye of mankind”
;
and finally arraigned them for the things which had befallen Him at
their hands.
In His Tablet to Queen Victoria He, moreover, invites these kings to
hold fast to “the Lesser Peace,”
since they had refused
“the Most Great Peace”
; exhorts them to be reconciled
among themselves, to unite and to reduce their armaments; bids them
refrain from laying excessive burdens on their subjects, who, He
informs them, are their “wards”
and “treasures”
;
enunciates the principle that should any one among them take up arms
against another, all should rise against him; and warns them not to
deal with Him as the “King of Islám”
and his ministers
had dealt.
To the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, the most prominent and
influential monarch of his day in the West, designated by Him as the
“Chief of Sovereigns,”
and who, to quote His words, had
“cast behind his back”
the Tablet revealed for him in
Adrianople, He, while a prisoner in the army barracks, addressed a
second Tablet and transmitted it through the French agent in ‘Akká.
In this He announces the coming of “Him Who is the
Unconstrained,”
whose purpose is to “quicken the world”
and unite its peoples; unequivocally asserts that Jesus Christ was
the Herald of His Mission; proclaims the fall of “the stars of
the firmament of knowledge,”
who have turned aside from Him;
exposes that monarch’s insincerity; and clearly prophesies that his
kingdom shall be “thrown into confusion,”
that his “empire
shall pass”
from his hands, and that “commotions shall
seize all the people in that land,”
unless he arises to help
the Cause of God and follow Him Who is His Spirit.
In memorable passages addressed to “the Rulers of America and
the Presidents of the Republics therein”
He, in His
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, calls upon them to “adorn the temple of dominion
with the ornament of justice and of the fear of God, and its head
with the crown of remembrance”
of their Lord; declares that
“the Promised One”
has been made manifest; counsels them
to avail themselves of the “Day of God”
; and bids them
“bind with the hands of justice the broken”
and “crush”
the “oppressor”
with “the rod of the commandments of
their Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.”
To Nicolaevitch Alexander II, the all-powerful Czar of Russia, He
addressed, as He lay a prisoner in the barracks, an Epistle wherein
He announces the advent of the promised Father, Whom “the tongue
of Isaiah hath extolled,”
and “with Whose name both the
Torah and the Evangel were adorned”
; commands him to “arise
… and summon the nations unto God”
; warns him to beware lest
his sovereignty withhold him from “Him Who is the Supreme
Sovereign”
; acknowledges the aid extended by his Ambassador in
Ṭihrán; and cautions him not to forfeit the station ordained for
him by God.
To Queen Victoria He, during that same period, addressed an Epistle
in which He calls upon her to incline her ear to the voice of her
Lord, the Lord of all mankind; bids her “cast away all that is
on earth,”
and set her heart towards her Lord, the Ancient of
Days; asserts that “all that hath been mentioned in the Gospel
hath been fulfilled”
; assures her that God would reward her for
having “forbidden the trading in slaves,”
were she to
follow what has been sent unto her by Him; commends her for having
“entrusted the reins of counsel into the hands of the
representatives of the people”
; and exhorts them to “regard
themselves as the representatives of all that dwell on earth,”
and to judge between men with “pure justice.”
In a celebrated passage addressed to William I, King of Prussia and
newly-acclaimed emperor of a unified Germany, He, in His
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, bids the sovereign hearken to His Voice, the Voice of
God Himself; warns him to take heed lest his pride debar him from
recognizing “the Day-Spring of Divine Revelation,”
and
admonishes him to “remember the one (Napoleon III) whose
power transcended”
his power, and who “went down to dust
in great loss.”
Furthermore, in that same Book, apostrophizing
the “banks of the Rhine,”
He predicts that “the
swords of retribution”
would be drawn against them, and that
“the lamentations of Berlin”
would be raised, though at
that time she was “in conspicuous glory.”
In another notable passage of that same Book, addressed to
Francis-Joseph, the Austrian Emperor and heir of the Holy Roman
Empire, Bahá’u’lláh reproves the sovereign for having neglected
to inquire about Him in the course of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem;
takes God to witness that He had found him “clinging unto the
Branch and heedless of the Root”
; grieves to observe his
waywardness; and bids him open his eyes and gaze on “the Light
that shineth above this luminous Horizon.”
To ‘Alí Páshá, the Grand Vizir of the Sulṭán of Turkey
He addressed, shortly after His arrival in ‘Akká, a second Tablet,
in which He reprimands him for his cruelty “that hath made hell
to blaze and the Spirit to lament”
; recounts his acts of
oppression; condemns him as one of those who, from time immemorial,
have denounced the Prophets as stirrers of mischief; prophesies his
downfall; expatiates on His own sufferings and those of His
fellow-exiles; extolls their fortitude and detachment; predicts that
God’s “wrathful anger”
will seize him and his
government, that “sedition will be stirred up”
in their
midst, and that their “dominions will be disrupted”
; and
affirms that were he to awake, he would abandon all his possessions,
and would “choose to abide in one of the dilapidated rooms of
this Most Great Prison.”
In the Lawḥ-i-Fu’ád, in the
course of His reference to the premature death of the Sulṭán’s
Foreign Minister, Fu’ád Páshá, He thus confirms His
above-mentioned prediction: “Soon will We dismiss the one (‘Alí
Páshá) who was like unto him and will lay hold on their
Chief (Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz) who ruleth the land,
and I, verily, am the Almighty, the All-Compelling.”
No less outspoken and emphatic are the messages, some embodied in
specific Tablets, others interspersed through His writings, which
Bahá’u’lláh addressed to the world’s ecclesiastical leaders
of all denominations — messages in which He discloses, clearly and
unreservedly, the claims of His Revelation, summons them to heed His
call, and denounces, in certain specific cases, their perversity,
their extreme arrogance and tyranny.
In immortal passages of His Kitáb-i-Aqdas and other Tablets He bids
the entire company of these ecclesiastical leaders to “fear
God,”
to “rein in”
their pens, “fling away idle
fancies and imaginings, and turn then towards the Horizon of
Certitude”
; warns them to “weigh not the Book of God
(Kitáb-i-Aqdas) with such standards and sciences as are
current”
amongst them; designates that same Book as the
“Unerring Balance established amongst men”
; laments over
their blindness and waywardness; asserts His superiority in vision,
insight, utterance and wisdom; proclaims His innate and God-given
knowledge; cautions them not to “shut out the people by yet
another veil,”
after He Himself had “rent the veils
asunder”
; accuses them of having been “the cause of the
repudiation of the Faith in its early days”
; and adjures them
to “peruse with fairness and justice that which hath been sent
down”
by Him, and to “nullify not the Truth”
with
the things they possess.
To Pope Pius IX, the undisputed head of the most powerful Church in
Christendom, possessor of both temporal and spiritual authority, He,
a Prisoner in the army barracks of the penal-colony of ‘Akká,
addressed a most weighty Epistle, in which He announces that “He
Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with clouds,”
and
that “the Word which the Son concealed is made manifest.”
He, moreover, warns him not to dispute with Him even as the Pharisees
of old disputed with Jesus Christ; bids him leave his palaces unto
such as desire them, “sell all the embellished ornaments”
in his possession, “expend them in the path of God,”
abandon his kingdom unto the kings, “arise … amidst the
peoples of the earth,”
and summon them to His Faith. Regarding
him as one of the suns of the heaven of God’s names, He cautions
him to guard himself lest “darkness spread its veils”
over
him; calls upon him to “exhort the kings”
to “deal
equitably with men”
; and counsels him to walk in the footsteps
of his Lord, and follow His example.
To the patriarchs of the Christian Church He issued a specific
summons in which He proclaims the coming of the Promised One; exhorts
them to “fear God”
and not to follow “the vain
imaginings of the superstitious”
; and directs them to lay aside
the things they possess and “take fast hold of the Tablet of God
by His sovereign power.”
To the archbishops of that Church He
similarly declares that “He Who is the Lord of all men hath
appeared,”
that they are “numbered with the dead,”
and that great is the blessedness of him who is “stirred by the
breeze of God, and hath arisen from amongst the dead in this
perspicuous Name.”
In passages addressed to its bishops He
proclaims that “the Everlasting Father calleth aloud between
earth and heaven,”
pronounces them to be the fallen stars of
the heaven of His knowledge, and affirms that His body “yearneth
for the cross”
and His head is “eager for the spear in the
path of the All-Merciful.”
The concourse of Christian priests
He bids “leave the bells,”
and come forth from their
churches; exhorts them to “proclaim aloud the Most Great Name
among the nations”
; assures them that whoever will summon men
in His Name will “show forth that which is beyond the power of
all that are on earth”
; warns them that the “Day of
Reckoning hath appeared”
; and counsels them to turn with their
hearts to their “Lord, the Forgiving, the Generous.”
In
numerous passages addressed to the “concourse of monks”
He
bids them not to seclude themselves in churches and cloisters, but to
occupy themselves with that which will profit their souls and the
souls of men; enjoins them to enter into wedlock; and affirms that if
they choose to follow Him He will make them heirs of His Kingdom, and
that if they transgress against Him, He will, in His long-suffering,
endure it patiently.
And finally, in several passages addressed to the entire body of the
followers of Jesus Christ He identifies Himself with the “Father”
spoken of by Isaiah, with the “Comforter”
Whose Covenant
He Who is the Spirit (Jesus) had Himself established, and with the
“Spirit of Truth”
Who will guide them “into all
truth”
; proclaims His Day to be the Day of God; announces the
conjunction of the river Jordan with the “Most Great Ocean”
;
asserts their heedlessness as well as His own claim to have opened
unto them “the gates of the kingdom”
; affirms that the
promised “Temple”
has been built “with the hands of
the will”
of their Lord, the Mighty, the Bounteous; bids them
“rend the veils asunder,”
and enter in His name His
Kingdom; recalls the saying of Jesus to Peter; and assures them that,
if they choose to follow Him, He will make them to become “quickeners
of mankind.”
To the entire body of Muslim ecclesiastics Bahá’u’lláh
specifically devoted innumerable passages in His Books and Tablets,
wherein He, in vehement language, denounces their cruelty; condemns
their pride and arrogance; calls upon them to lay aside the things
they possess, to hold their peace, and give ear to the words He has
spoken; and asserts that, by reason of their deeds, “the exalted
station of the people hath been abased, the standard of Islám hath
been reversed, and its mighty throne hath fallen.”
To the
“concourse of Persian divines”
He more particularly
addressed His condemnatory words in which He stigmatizes their deeds,
and prophesies that their “glory will be turned into the most
wretched abasement,”
and that they shall behold the punishment
which will be inflicted upon them, “as decreed by God, the
Ordainer, the All-Wise.”
To the Jewish people, He, moreover, announced that the Most Great Law
has come, that “the Ancient Beauty ruleth upon the throne of
David,”
Who cries aloud and invokes His Name, that “from
Zion hath appeared that which was hidden,”
and that “from
Jerusalem is heard the Voice of God, the One, the Incomparable, the
Omniscient.”
To the “high priests”
of the Zoroastrian Faith He,
furthermore, proclaimed that “the Incomparable Friend”
is
manifest, that He “speaketh that wherein lieth salvation,”
that “the Hand of Omnipotence is stretched forth from behind the
clouds,”
that the tokens of His majesty and greatness are
unveiled; and declared that “no man’s acts shall be acceptable
in this day unless he forsaketh mankind and all that men possess, and
setteth his face towards the Omnipotent One.”
Some of the weightiest passages of His Epistle to Queen Victoria are
addressed to the members of the British Legislature, the Mother of
Parliaments, as well as to the elected representatives of the peoples
in other lands. In these He asserts that His purpose is to quicken
the world and unite its peoples; refers to the treatment meted out to
Him by His enemies; exhorts the legislators to “take counsel
together,”
and to concern themselves only “with that which
profiteth mankind”
; and affirms that the “sovereign
remedy”
for the “healing of all the world”
is the
“union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common
Faith,”
which can “in no wise be achieved except through
the power of a skilled and all-powerful and inspired Physician.”
He, moreover, in His Most Holy Book, has enjoined the selection of a
single language and the adoption of a common script for all on earth
to use, an injunction which, when carried out, would, as He Himself
affirms in that Book, be one of the signs of the “coming of age
of the human race.”
No less significant are the words addressed separately by Him to the
“people of the Bayán,”
to the wise men of the world, to
its poets, to its men of letters, to its mystics and even to its
tradesmen, in which He exhorts them to be attentive to His voice, to
recognize His Day, and to follow His bidding.
Such in sum are the salient features of the concluding utterances of
that historic Proclamation, the opening notes of which were sounded
during the latter part of Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to
Adrianople, and which closed during the early years of His
incarceration in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká. Kings and emperors,
severally and collectively; the chief magistrates of the Republics of
the American continent; ministers and ambassadors; the Sovereign
Pontiff himself; the Vicar of the Prophet of Islám; the royal
Trustee of the Kingdom of the Hidden Imám; the monarchs of
Christendom, its patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, priests and monks;
the recognized leaders of both the Sunní and Shí‘ah
sacerdotal orders; the high priests of the Zoroastrian religion; the
philosophers, the ecclesiastical leaders, the wise men and the
inhabitants of Constantinople — that proud seat of both the Sultanate
and the Caliphate; the entire company of the professed adherents of
the Zoroastrian, the Jewish, the Christian and Muslim Faiths; the
people of the Bayán; the wise men of the world, its men of letters,
its poets, its mystics, its tradesmen, the elected representatives of
its peoples; His own countrymen — all have, at one time or another,
in books, Epistles, and Tablets, been brought directly within the
purview of the exhortations, the warnings, the appeals, the
declarations and the prophecies which constitute the theme of His
momentous summons to the leaders of mankind — a summons which stands
unparalleled in the annals of any previous religion, and to which the
messages directed by the Prophet of Islám to some of the rulers
among His contemporaries alone offer a faint resemblance.
“Never since the beginning of the world,”
Bahá’u’lláh
Himself affirms, “hath the Message been so openly proclaimed.”
“Each one of them,”
He, specifically referring to the
Tablets addressed by Him to the sovereigns of the earth — Tablets
acclaimed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as a “miracle”
— has
written, “hath been designated by a special name. The first hath
been named ‘The Rumbling,’ the second ‘The Blow,’ the third
‘The Inevitable,’ the fourth ‘The Plain,’ the fifth ‘The
Catastrophe,’ and the others ‘The Stunning Trumpet-Blast,’ ‘The
Near Event,’ ‘The Great Terror,’ ‘The Trumpet,’ ‘The
Bugle,’ and the like, so that all the peoples of the earth may
know, of a certainty, and may witness, with outward and inner eyes,
that He Who is the Lord of Names hath prevailed, and will continue to
prevail, under all conditions, over all men.”
The most
important of these Tablets, together with the celebrated
Súriy-i-Haykal (the Súrih of the Temple), He, moreover, ordered to
be written in the shape of a pentacle, symbolizing the temple of man,
and which He identified, when addressing the followers of the Gospel
in one of His Tablets, with the “Temple” mentioned by the Prophet
Zechariah, and designated as “the resplendent dawning-place of
the All-Merciful,”
and which “the hands of the power of
Him Who is the Causer of Causes”
had built.
Revelation of the laws and ordinances of the Bahá’í Dispensation
Unique and stupendous as was this Proclamation, it proved to be but a
prelude to a still mightier revelation of the creative power of its
Author, and to what may well rank as the most signal act of His
ministry — the promulgation of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Alluded to in the
Kitáb-i-Íqán; the principal repository of that Law which the Prophet
Isaiah had anticipated, and which the writer of the Apocalypse had
described as the “new heaven”
and the “new earth,”
as “the Tabernacle of God,”
as the “Holy City,”
as the “Bride,”
the “New Jerusalem coming down from
God,”
this “Most Holy Book,”
whose provisions must
remain inviolate for no less than a thousand years, and whose system
will embrace the entire planet, may well be regarded as the brightest
emanation of the mind of Bahá’u’lláh, as the Mother Book of His
Dispensation, and the Charter of His New World Order.
Revealed soon after Bahá’u’lláh had been transferred to the
house of ‘Údí Khammár (circa 1873), at a time when He was
still encompassed by the tribulations that had afflicted Him, through
the acts committed by His enemies and the professed adherents of His
Faith, this Book, this treasury enshrining the priceless gems of His
Revelation, stands out, by virtue of the principles it inculcates,
the administrative institutions it ordains and the function with
which it invests the appointed Successor of its Author, unique and
incomparable among the world’s sacred Scriptures. For, unlike the
Old Testament and the Holy Books which preceded it, in which the
actual precepts uttered by the Prophet Himself are non-existent;
unlike the Gospels, in which the few sayings attributed to Jesus
Christ afford no clear guidance regarding the future administration
of the affairs of His Faith; unlike even the Qur’án which, though
explicit in the laws and ordinances formulated by the Apostle of God,
is silent on the all-important subject of the succession, the
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, revealed from first to last by the Author of the
Dispensation Himself, not only preserves for posterity the basic laws
and ordinances on which the fabric of His future World Order must
rest, but ordains, in addition to the function of interpretation
which it confers upon His Successor, the necessary institutions
through which the integrity and unity of His Faith can alone be
safeguarded.
In this Charter of the future world civilization its Author — at once
the Judge, the Lawgiver, the Unifier and Redeemer of
mankind — announces to the kings of the earth the promulgation of the
“Most Great Law”
; pronounces them to be His vassals;
proclaims Himself the “King of Kings”
; disclaims any
intention of laying hands on their kingdoms; reserves for Himself the
right to “seize and possess the hearts of men”
; warns the
world’s ecclesiastical leaders not to weigh the “Book of God”
with such standards as are current amongst them; and affirms that the
Book itself is the “Unerring Balance”
established amongst
men. In it He formally ordains the institution of the “House of
Justice,”
defines its functions, fixes its revenues, and
designates its members as the “Men of Justice,”
the
“Deputies of God,”
the “Trustees of the
All-Merciful,”
alludes to the future Center of His Covenant,
and invests Him with the right of interpreting His holy Writ;
anticipates by implication the institution of Guardianship; bears
witness to the revolutionizing effect of His World Order; enunciates
the doctrine of the “Most Great Infallibility”
of the
Manifestation of God; asserts this infallibility to be the inherent
and exclusive right of the Prophet; and rules out the possibility of
the appearance of another Manifestation ere the lapse of at least one
thousand years.
In this Book He, moreover, prescribes the obligatory prayers;
designates the time and period of fasting; prohibits congregational
prayer except for the dead; fixes the Qiblih; institutes the
Ḥuqúqu’lláh (Right of God); formulates the law of inheritance;
ordains the institution of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár;
establishes the Nineteen Day Feasts, the Bahá’í festivals and the
Intercalary Days; abolishes the institution of priesthood; prohibits
slavery, asceticism, mendicancy, monasticism, penance, the use of
pulpits and the kissing of hands; prescribes monogamy; condemns
cruelty to animals, idleness and sloth, backbiting and calumny;
censures divorce; interdicts gambling, the use of opium, wine and
other intoxicating drinks; specifies the punishments for murder,
arson, adultery and theft; stresses the importance of marriage and
lays down its essential conditions; imposes the obligation of
engaging in some trade or profession, exalting such occupation to the
rank of worship; emphasizes the necessity of providing the means for
the education of children; and lays upon every person the duty of
writing a testament and of strict obedience to one’s government.
Apart from these provisions Bahá’u’lláh exhorts His followers
to consort, with amity and concord and without discrimination, with
the adherents of all religions; warns them to guard against
fanaticism, sedition, pride, dispute and contention; inculcates upon
them immaculate cleanliness, strict truthfulness, spotless chastity,
trustworthiness; hospitality, fidelity, courtesy, forbearance,
justice and fairness; counsels them to be “even as the fingers
of one hand and the limbs of one body”
; calls upon them to
arise and serve His Cause; and assures them of His undoubted aid. He,
furthermore, dwells upon the instability of human affairs; declares
that true liberty consists in man’s submission to His commandments;
cautions them not to be indulgent in carrying out His statutes;
prescribes the twin inseparable duties of recognizing the “Dayspring
of God’s Revelation”
and of observing all the ordinances
revealed by Him, neither of which, He affirms, is acceptable without
the other.
The significant summons issued to the Presidents of the Republics of
the American continent to seize their opportunity in the Day of God
and to champion the cause of justice; the injunction to the members
of parliaments throughout the world, urging the adoption of a
universal script and language; His warnings to William I, the
conqueror of Napoleon III; the reproof He administers to Francis
Joseph, the Emperor of Austria; His reference to “the
lamentations of Berlin”
in His apostrophe to “the banks of
the Rhine”
; His condemnation of “the throne of tyranny”
established in Constantinople, and His prediction of the extinction
of its “outward splendor”
and of the tribulations destined
to overtake its inhabitants; the words of cheer and comfort He
addresses to His native city, assuring her that God had chosen her to
be “the source of the joy of all mankind”
; His prophecy
that “the voice of the heroes of Khurásán”
will be raised in glorification of their Lord; His assertion that men
“endued with mighty valor”
will be raised up in Kirmán
who will make mention of Him; and finally, His magnanimous assurance
to a perfidious brother who had afflicted Him with such anguish, that
an “ever-forgiving, all-bounteous”
God would forgive him
his iniquities were he only to repent — all these further enrich the
contents of a Book designated by its Author as “the source of
true felicity,”
as the “Unerring Balance,”
as the
“Straight Path”
and as the “quickener of mankind.”
The laws and ordinances that constitute the major theme of this Book,
Bahá’u’lláh, moreover, has specifically characterized as “the
breath of life unto all created things,”
as “the mightiest
stronghold,”
as the “fruits”
of His “Tree,”
as “the highest means for the maintenance of order in the world
and the security of its peoples,”
as “the lamps of His
wisdom and loving-providence,”
as “the sweet smelling
savor of His garment,”
as the “keys”
of His “mercy”
to His creatures. “This Book,”
He Himself testifies, “is
a heaven which We have adorned with the stars of Our commandments and
prohibitions.”
“Blessed the man,”
He, moreover, has
stated, “who will read it, and ponder the verses sent down in it
by God, the Lord of Power, the Almighty. Say, O men! Take hold of it
with the hand of resignation … By My life! It hath been sent down
in a manner that amazeth the minds of men. Verily, it is My
weightiest testimony unto all people, and the proof of the
All-Merciful unto all who are in heaven and all who are on earth.”
And again: “Blessed the palate that savoreth its sweetness, and
the perceiving eye that recognizeth that which is treasured therein,
and the understanding heart that comprehendeth its allusions and
mysteries. By God! Such is the majesty of what hath been revealed
therein, and so tremendous the revelation of its veiled allusions
that the loins of utterance shake when attempting their description.”
And finally: “In such a manner hath the Kitáb-i-Aqdas been
revealed that it attracteth and embraceth all the divinely appointed
Dispensations. Blessed those who peruse it! Blessed those who
apprehend it! Blessed those who meditate upon it! Blessed those who
ponder its meaning! So vast is its range that it hath encompassed all
men ere their recognition of it. Erelong will its sovereign power,
its pervasive influence and the greatness of its might be manifested
on earth.”
The formulation by Bahá’u’lláh, in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, of the
fundamental laws of His Dispensation was followed, as His Mission
drew to a close, by the enunciation of certain precepts and
principles which lie at the very core of His Faith, by the
reaffirmation of truths He had previously proclaimed, by the
elaboration and elucidation of some of the laws He had already laid
down, by the revelation of further prophecies and warnings, and by
the establishment of subsidiary ordinances designed to supplement the
provisions of His Most Holy Book. These were recorded in unnumbered
Tablets, which He continued to reveal until the last days of His
earthly life, among which the “Ishráqát” (Splendors),
the “Bishárát” (Glad Tidings), the “Ṭarázát”
(Ornaments), the “Tajallíyát” (Effulgences), the
“Kalimát-i-Firdawsíyyih” (Words of Paradise), the
“Lawḥ-i-Aqdas” (Most Holy Tablet), the “Lawḥ-i-Dunyá”
(Tablet of the World), the “Lawḥ-i-Maqṣúd (Tablet of Maqṣúd),
are the most noteworthy. These Tablets — mighty and final effusions
of His indefatigable pen — must rank among the choicest fruits which
His mind has yielded, and mark the consummation of His
forty-year-long ministry.
Enunciation of fundamental principles underlying the Bahá’í Revelation
Of the principles enshrined in these Tablets the most vital of them
all is the principle of the oneness and wholeness of the human race,
which may well be regarded as the hall-mark of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Revelation and the pivot of His teachings. Of such cardinal
importance is this principle of unity that it is expressly referred
to in the Book of His Covenant, and He unreservedly proclaims it as
the central purpose of His Faith. “We, verily,”
He
declares, “have come to unite and weld together all that dwell
on earth.”
“So potent is the light of unity,”
He
further states, “that it can illuminate the whole earth.”
“At one time,”
He has written with reference to this
central theme of His Revelation, “We spoke in the language of
the lawgiver; at another in that of the truth seeker and the mystic,
and yet Our supreme purpose and highest wish hath always been to
disclose the glory and sublimity of this station.”
Unity, He
states, is the goal that “excelleth every goal”
and an
aspiration which is “the monarch of all aspirations.”
“The
world,”
He proclaims, “is but one country, and mankind its
citizens.”
He further affirms that the unification of mankind,
the last stage in the evolution of humanity towards maturity is
inevitable, that “soon will the present day order be rolled up,
and a new one spread out in its stead,”
that “the whole
earth is now in a state of pregnancy,”
that “the day is
approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from
it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting
blossoms, the most heavenly blessings.”
He deplores the
defectiveness of the prevailing order, exposes the inadequacy of
patriotism as a directing and controlling force in human society, and
regards the “love of mankind”
and service to its interests
as the worthiest and most laudable objects of human endeavor. He,
moreover, laments that “the vitality of men’s belief in God is
dying out in every land,”
that the “face of the world”
is turned towards “waywardness and unbelief”
; proclaims
religion to be “a radiant light and an impregnable stronghold
for the protection and welfare of the peoples of the world”
and
“the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the
world”
; affirms its fundamental purpose to be the promotion of
union and concord amongst men; warns lest it be made “a source
of dissension, of discord and hatred”
; commands that its
principles be taught to children in the schools of the world, in a
manner that would not be productive of either prejudice or
fanaticism; attributes “the waywardness of the ungodly”
to
the “decline of religion”
; and predicts “convulsions”
of such severity as to “cause the limbs of mankind to quake.”
The principle of collective security He unreservedly urges;
recommends the reduction in national armaments; and proclaims as
necessary and inevitable the convening of a world gathering at which
the kings and rulers of the world will deliberate for the
establishment of peace among the nations.
Justice He extols as “the light of men”
and their
“guardian,”
as “the revealer of the secrets of the
world of being, and the standard-bearer of love and bounty”
;
declares its radiance to be incomparable; affirms that upon it must
depend “the organization of the world and the tranquillity of
mankind.”
He characterizes its “two pillars”
— “reward
and punishment”
— as “the sources of life”
to the
human race; warns the peoples of the world to bestir themselves in
anticipation of its advent; and prophesies that, after an interval of
great turmoil and grievous injustice, its day-star will shine in its
full splendor and glory.
He, furthermore, inculcates the principle of “moderation in all
things”
; declares that whatsoever, be it “Liberty,
civilization and the like,”
“passeth beyond the limits of
moderation”
must “exercise a pernicious influence upon
men”
; observes that western civilization has gravely perturbed
and alarmed the peoples of the world; and predicts that the day is
approaching when the “flame”
of a civilization “carried
to excess”
“will devour the cities.”
Consultation He establishes as one of the fundamental principles of
His Faith; describes it as “the lamp of guidance,”
as “the
bestower of understanding,”
and as one of the two “luminaries”
of the “heaven of Divine wisdom.”
Knowledge, He states, is
“as wings to man’s life and a ladder for his ascent”
;
its acquisition He regards as “incumbent upon every one”
;
considers “arts, crafts and sciences”
to be conducive to
the exaltation of the world of being; commends the wealth acquired
through crafts and professions; acknowledges the indebtedness of the
peoples of the world to scientists and craftsmen; and discourages the
study of such sciences as are unprofitable to men, and “begin
with words and end with words.”
The injunction to “consort with all men in a spirit of
friendliness and fellowship”
He further emphasizes, and
recognizes such association to be conducive to “union and
concord,”
which, He affirms, are the establishers of order in
the world and the quickeners of nations. The necessity of adopting a
universal tongue and script He repeatedly stresses; deplores the
waste of time involved in the study of divers languages; affirms that
with the adoption of such a language and script the whole earth will
be considered as “one city and one land”
; and claims to be
possessed of the knowledge of both, and ready to impart it to any one
who might seek it from Him.
To the trustees of the House of Justice He assigns the duty of
legislating on matters not expressly provided in His writings, and
promises that God will “inspire them with whatsoever He
willeth.”
The establishment of a constitutional form of
government, in which the ideals of republicanism and the majesty of
kingship, characterized by Him as “one of the signs of God,”
are combined, He recommends as a meritorious achievement; urges that
special regard be paid to the interests of agriculture; and makes
specific reference to “the swiftly appearing newspapers,”
describes them as “the mirror of the world”
and as “an
amazing and potent phenomenon,”
and prescribes to all who are
responsible for their production the duty to be sanctified from
malice, passion and prejudice, to be just and fair-minded, to be
painstaking in their inquiries, and ascertain all the facts in every
situation.
The doctrine of the Most Great Infallibility He further elaborates;
the obligation laid on His followers to “behave towards the
government of the country in which they reside with loyalty, honesty
and truthfulness,” He reaffirms; the ban imposed upon the waging of
holy war and the destruction of books He reemphasizes; and He singles
out for special praise men of learning and wisdom, whom He extols as
“eyes”
to the body of mankind, and as the “greatest
gifts”
conferred upon the world.
Nor should a review of the outstanding features of Bahá’u’lláh’s
writings during the latter part of His banishment to ‘Akká fail to
include a reference to the Lawḥ-i-Ḥikmat (Tablet of Wisdom), in
which He sets forth the fundamentals of true philosophy, or to the
Tablet of Visitation revealed in honor of the Imám Ḥusayn, whose
praises He celebrates in glowing language; or to the “Questions and
Answers” which elucidates the laws and ordinances of the
Kitáb-i-Aqdas; or to the “Lawḥ-i-Burhán” (Tablet of the
Proof) in which the acts perpetrated by Shaykh
Muḥammad-Báqir, surnamed “Dhi’b”
(Wolf), and Mír Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, the Imám-Jum‘ih of Iṣfahán,
surnamed “Raqshá’”
(She-Serpent), are
severely condemned; or to the Lawḥ-i-Karmil (Tablet of Carmel) in
which the Author significantly makes mention of “the City of God
that hath descended from heaven,”
and prophesies that “erelong
will God sail His Ark”
upon that mountain, and “will
manifest the people of Bahá.”
Finally, mention must be made of
His Epistle to Shaykh Muḥammad-Taqí, surnamed
“Ibn-i-Dhi’b” (Son of the Wolf), the last outstanding
Tablet revealed by the pen of Bahá’u’lláh, in which He calls
upon that rapacious priest to repent of his acts, quotes some of the
most characteristic and celebrated passages of His own writings, and
adduces proofs establishing the validity of His Cause.
With this book, revealed about one year prior to His ascension, the
prodigious achievement as author of a hundred volumes, repositories
of the priceless pearls of His Revelation, may be said to have
practically terminated — volumes replete with unnumbered
exhortations, revolutionizing principles, world-shaping laws and
ordinances, dire warnings and portentous prophecies, with
soul-uplifting prayers and meditations, illuminating commentaries and
interpretations, impassioned discourses and homilies, all
interspersed with either addresses or references to kings, to
emperors and to ministers, of both the East and the West, to
ecclesiastics of divers denominations, and to leaders in the
intellectual, political, literary, mystical, commercial and
humanitarian spheres of human activity.
“We, verily,”
wrote Bahá’u’lláh, surveying, in the
evening of His life, from His Most Great Prison, the entire range of
this vast and weighty Revelation, “have not fallen short of Our
duty to exhort men, and to deliver that whereunto I was bidden by
God, the Almighty, the All-Praised.”
“Is there any
excuse,”
He further has stated, “left for any one in this
Revelation? No, by God, the Lord of the Mighty Throne! My signs have
encompassed the earth, and my power enveloped all mankind.”
Well nigh half a century had passed since the inception of the Faith.
Cradled in adversity, deprived in its infancy of its Herald and
Leader, it had been raised from the dust, in which a hostile despot
had thrown it, by its second and greatest Luminary Who, despite
successive banishments, had, in less than half a century, succeeded
in rehabilitating its fortunes, in proclaiming its Message, in
enacting its laws and ordinances, in formulating its principles and
in ordaining its institutions, and it had just begun to enjoy the
sunshine of a prosperity never previously experienced, when suddenly
it was robbed of its Author by the Hand of Destiny, its followers
were plunged into sorrow and consternation, its repudiators found
their declining hopes revive, and its adversaries, political as well
as ecclesiastical, began to take heart again.
Already nine months before His ascension Bahá’u’lláh, as
attested by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, had voiced His desire to depart
from this world. From that time onward it became increasingly
evident, from the tone of His remarks to those who attained His
presence, that the close of His earthly life was approaching, though
He refrained from mentioning it openly to any one. On the night
preceding the eleventh of Shavvál 1309 A.H. (May 8, 1892) He
contracted a slight fever which, though it mounted the following day,
soon after subsided. He continued to grant interviews to certain of
the friends and pilgrims, but it soon became evident that He was not
well. His fever returned in a more acute form than before, His
general condition grew steadily worse, complications ensued which at
last culminated in His ascension, at the hour of dawn, on the 2nd of
Dhi’l-Qa‘dih 1309 A.H. (May 29, 1892), eight hours after
sunset, in the 75th year of His age. His spirit, at long last
released from the toils of a life crowded with tribulations, had
winged its flight to His “other dominions,”
dominions
“whereon the eyes of the people of names have never fallen,”
and to which the “Luminous Maid,”
“clad in white,”
had bidden Him hasten, as described by Himself in the Lawḥ-i-Ru’yá
(Tablet of the Vision), revealed nineteen years previously, on the
anniversary of the birth of His Forerunner.
Circumstances attending His passing
Six days before He passed away He summoned to His presence, as He lay
in bed leaning against one of His sons, the entire company of
believers, including several pilgrims, who had assembled in the
Mansion, for what proved to be their last audience with Him. “I
am well pleased with you all,”
He gently and affectionately
addressed the weeping crowd that gathered about Him. “Ye have
rendered many services, and been very assiduous in your labors. Ye
have come here every morning and every evening. May God assist you to
remain united. May He aid you to exalt the Cause of the Lord of
being.”
To the women, including members of His own family,
gathered at His bedside, He addressed similar words of encouragement,
definitely assuring them that in a document entrusted by Him to the
Most Great Branch He had commended them all to His care.
The news of His ascension was instantly communicated to Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd in a telegram which began with the words “the
Sun of Bahá has set” and in which the monarch was advised of the
intention of interring the sacred remains within the precincts of the
Mansion, an arrangement to which he readily assented. Bahá’u’lláh
was accordingly laid to rest in the northernmost room of the house
which served as a dwelling-place for His son-in-law, the most
northerly of the three houses lying to the west of, and adjacent to,
the Mansion. His interment took place shortly after sunset, on the
very day of His ascension.
The inconsolable Nabíl, who had had the privilege of a private
audience with Bahá’u’lláh during the days of His illness; whom
‘Abdu’l-Bahá had chosen to select those passages which
constitute the text of the Tablet of Visitation now recited in the
Most Holy Tomb; and who, in his uncontrollable grief, drowned himself
in the sea shortly after the passing of his Beloved, thus describes
the agony of those days: “Methinks, the spiritual commotion set up
in the world of dust had caused all the worlds of God to tremble.…
My inner and outer tongue are powerless to portray the condition we
were in.… In the midst of the prevailing confusion a multitude of
the inhabitants of ‘Akká and of the neighboring villages, that had
thronged the fields surrounding the Mansion, could be seen weeping,
beating upon their heads, and crying aloud their grief.”
For a full week a vast number of mourners, rich and poor alike,
tarried to grieve with the bereaved family, partaking day and night
of the food that was lavishly dispensed by its members. Notables,
among whom were numbered Shí‘ahs, Sunnís, Christians, Jews
and Druzes, as well as poets, ‘ulamás and government officials,
all joined in lamenting the loss, and in magnifying the virtues and
greatness of Bahá’u’lláh, many of them paying to Him their
written tributes, in verse and in prose, in both Arabic and Turkish.
From cities as far afield as Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut and Cairo
similar tributes were received. These glowing testimonials were,
without exception, submitted to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who now
represented the Cause of the departed Leader, and Whose praises were
often mingled in these eulogies with the homage paid to His Father.
And yet these effusive manifestations of sorrow and expressions of
praise and of admiration, which the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh
had spontaneously evoked among the unbelievers in the Holy Land and
the adjoining countries, were but a drop when compared with the ocean
of grief and the innumerable evidences of unbounded devotion which,
at the hour of the setting of the Sun of Truth, poured forth from the
hearts of the countless thousands who had espoused His Cause, and
were determined to carry aloft its banner in Persia, India, Russia,
‘Iráq, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt and Syria.
With the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh draws to a close a period
which, in many ways, is unparalleled in the world’s religious
history. The first century of the Bahá’í Era had by now run half
its course. An epoch, unsurpassed in its sublimity, its fecundity and
duration by any previous Dispensation, and characterized, except for
a short interval of three years, by half a century of continuous and
progressive Revelation, had terminated. The Message proclaimed by the
Báb had yielded its golden fruit. The most momentous, though not the
most spectacular phase of the Heroic Age had ended. The Sun of Truth,
the world’s greatest Luminary, had risen in the Síyáh-Chál
of Ṭihrán, had broken through the clouds which enveloped it in
Baghdád, had suffered a momentary eclipse whilst mounting to
its zenith in Adrianople and had set finally in ‘Akká, never to
reappear ere the lapse of a full millenium. God’s newborn Faith,
the cynosure of all past Dispensations, had been fully and
unreservedly proclaimed. The prophecies announcing its advent had
been remarkably fulfilled. Its fundamental laws and cardinal
principles, the warp and woof of the fabric of its future World
Order, had been clearly enunciated. Its organic relation to, and its
attitude towards, the religious systems which preceded it had been
unmistakably defined. The primary institutions, within which an
embryonic World Order was destined to mature, had been unassailably
established. The Covenant designed to safeguard the unity and
integrity of its world-embracing system had been irrevocably
bequeathed to posterity. The promise of the unification of the whole
human race, of the inauguration of the Most Great Peace, of the
unfoldment of a world civilization, had been incontestably given. The
dire warnings, foreshadowing catastrophes destined to befall kings,
ecclesiastics, governments and peoples, as a prelude to so glorious a
consummation, had been repeatedly uttered. The significant summons to
the Chief Magistrates of the New World, forerunner of the Mission
with which the North American continent was to be later invested, had
been issued. The initial contact with a nation, a descendant of whose
royal house was to espouse its Cause ere the expiry of the first
Bahá’í century, had been established. The original impulse which,
in the course of successive decades, has conferred, and will continue
to confer, in the years to come, inestimable benefits of both
spiritual and institutional significance upon God’s holy mountain,
overlooking the Most Great Prison, had been imparted. And finally,
the first banners of a spiritual conquest which, ere the termination
of that century, was to embrace no less than sixty countries in both
the Eastern and Western hemispheres had been triumphantly planted.
In the vastness and diversity of its Holy Writ; in the number of its
martyrs; in the valor of its champions; in the example set by its
followers; in the condign punishment suffered by its adversaries; in
the pervasiveness of its influence; in the incomparable heroism of
its Herald; in the dazzling greatness of its Author; in the
mysterious operation of its irresistible spirit; the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh, now standing at the threshold of the sixth decade
of its existence, had amply demonstrated its capacity to forge ahead,
indivisible and incorruptible, along the course traced for it by its
Founder, and to display, before the gaze of successive generations,
the signs and tokens of that celestial potency with which He Himself
had so richly endowed it.
Fate of the enemies of the Faith during His ministry
To the fate that has overtaken those kings, ministers and
ecclesiastics, in the East as well as in the West, who have, at
various stages of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry, either deliberately
persecuted His Cause, or have neglected to heed the warnings He had
uttered, or have failed in their manifest duty to respond to His
summons or to accord Him and His message the treatment they deserved,
particular attention, I feel, should at this juncture be directed.
Bahá’u’lláh Himself, referring to those who had actively arisen
to destroy or harm His Faith, had declared that “God hath not
blinked, nor will He ever blink His eyes at the tyranny of the
oppressor. More particularly in this Revelation hath He visited each
and every tyrant with His vengeance.”
Vast and awful is,
indeed, the spectacle which meets our eyes, as we survey the field
over which the retributory winds of God have, since the inception of
the ministry of Bahá’u’lláh, furiously swept, dethroning
monarchs, extinguishing dynasties, uprooting ecclesiastical
hierarchies, precipitating wars and revolutions, driving from office
princes and ministers, dispossessing the usurper, casting down the
tyrant, and chastising the wicked and the rebellious.
Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, who with Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh
was the author of the calamities heaped upon Bahá’u’lláh, and
was himself responsible for three decrees of banishment against the
Prophet; who had been stigmatized, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, as
occupying the “throne of tyranny,”
and whose fall had been
prophesied in the Lawḥ-i-Fu’ád, was deposed in consequence of a
palace revolution, was condemned by a fatvá (sentence) of the Muftí
in his own capital, was four days later assassinated (1876), and was
succeeded by a nephew who was declared to be an imbecile. The war of
1877–78 emancipated eleven million people from the Turkish yoke;
Adrianople was occupied by the Russian forces; the empire itself was
dissolved as a result of the war of 1914–18; the Sultanate was
abolished; a republic was proclaimed; and a rulership that had
endured above six centuries was ended.
The vain and despotic Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, denounced by
Bahá’u’lláh as the “Prince of Oppressors”
; of whom
He had written that he would soon be made “an object-lesson for
the world”
; whose reign was stained by the execution of the Báb
and the imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh; who had persistently
instigated his subsequent banishments to Constantinople, Adrianople
and ‘Akká; who, in collusion with a vicious sacerdotal order, had
vowed to strangle the Faith in its cradle, was dramatically
assassinated, in the shrine of Sháh ‘Abdu’l-‘Aẓím,
on the very eve of his jubilee, which, as ushering in a new era, was
to have been celebrated with the most elaborate magnificence, and was
to go down in history as the greatest day in the annals of the
Persian nation. The fortunes of his house thereafter steadily
declined, and finally through the scandalous misconduct of the
dissipated and irresponsible Aḥmad Sháh, led to the eclipse
and disappearance of the Qájár dynasty.
Napoleon III, the foremost monarch of his day in the West,
excessively ambitious, inordinately proud, tricky and superficial,
who is reported to have contemptuously flung down the Tablet sent to
him by Bahá’u’lláh, who was tested by Him and found wanting,
and whose downfall was explicitly predicted in a subsequent Tablet,
was ignominiously defeated in the Battle of Sedan (1870), marking the
greatest military capitulation recorded in modern history; lost his
kingdom and spent the remaining years of his life in exile. His hopes
were utterly blasted, his only son, the Prince Imperial, was killed
in the Zulu War, his much vaunted empire collapsed, a civil war
ensued more ferocious than the Franco-German war itself, and William
I, the Prussian king, was hailed emperor of a unified Germany in the
Palace of Versailles.
William I, the pride-intoxicated newly-acclaimed conqueror of
Napoleon III, admonished in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and bidden to ponder
the fate that had overtaken “one whose power transcended”
his own, warned in that same Book, that the “lamentations of
Berlin”
would be raised and that the banks of the Rhine would
be “covered with gore,”
sustained two attempts on his
life, and was succeeded by a son who died of a mortal disease, three
months after his accession to the throne, bequeathing the throne to
the arrogant, the headstrong and short-sighted William II. The pride
of the new monarch precipitated his downfall. Revolution, swiftly and
suddenly, broke out in his capital, communism reared its head in a
number of cities; the princes of the German states abdicated, and he
himself, fleeing ignominiously to Holland, was compelled to
relinquish his right to the throne. The constitution of Weimar sealed
the fate of the empire, whose birth had been so loudly proclaimed by
his grandfather, and the terms of an oppressively severe treaty
provoked “the lamentations”
which, half a century before,
had been ominously prophesied.
The arbitrary and unyielding Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria and
king of Hungary, who had been reproved in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, for
having neglected his manifest duty to inquire about Bahá’u’lláh
during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was so engulfed by
misfortunes and tragedies that his reign came to be regarded as one
unsurpassed by any other reign in the calamities it inflicted upon
the nation. His brother, Maximilian, was put to death in Mexico; the
Crown Prince Rudolph perished in ignominious circumstances; the
Empress was assassinated; Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife
were murdered in Serajevo; the “ramshackle empire” itself
disintegrated, was carved up, and a shrunken republic was set up on
the ruins of a vanished Holy Roman Empire — a republic which, after a
brief and precarious existence, was blotted out from the political
map of Europe.
Nicolaevitch Alexander II, the all-powerful Czar of Russia, who, in a
Tablet addressed to him by name had been thrice warned by
Bahá’u’lláh, had been bidden to “summon the nations unto
God,”
and had been cautioned not to allow his sovereignty to
prevent him from recognizing “the Supreme Sovereign,”
suffered several attempts on his life, and at last died at the hand
of an assassin. A harsh policy of repression, initiated by himself
and followed by his successor, Alexander III, paved the way for a
revolution which, in the reign of Nicholas II, swept away on a bloody
tide the empire of the Czars, brought in its wake war, disease and
famine, and established a militant proletariat which massacred the
nobility, persecuted the clergy, drove away the intellectuals,
disendowed the state religion, executed the Czar with his consort and
his family, and extinguished the dynasty of the Romanoffs.
Pope Pius IX, the undisputed head of the most powerful Church in
Christendom, who had been commanded, in an Epistle addressed to him
by Bahá’u’lláh, to leave his “palaces unto such as desire
them,”
to “sell all the embellished ornaments”
in
his possession, to “expend them in the path of God,”
and
hasten towards “the Kingdom,”
was compelled to surrender,
in distressing circumstances, to the besieging forces of King Victor
Emmanuel, and to submit himself to be depossessed of the Papal States
and of Rome itself. The loss of “the Eternal City,” over which
the Papal flag had flown for one thousand years, and the humiliation
of the religious orders under his jurisdiction, added mental anguish
to his physical infirmities and embittered the last years of his
life. The formal recognition of the Kingdom of Italy subsequently
exacted from one of his successors in the Vatican, confirmed the
virtual extinction of the Pope’s temporal sovereignty.
But the rapid dissolution of the Ottoman, the Napoleonic, the German,
the Austrian and the Russian empires, the demise of the Qájár
dynasty and the virtual extinction of the temporal sovereignty of the
Roman Pontiff do not exhaust the story of the catastrophes that
befell the monarchies of the world through the neglect of
Bahá’u’lláh’s warnings conveyed in the opening passages of
His Súriy-i-Mulúk. The conversion of the Portuguese and Spanish
monarchies, as well as the Chinese empire, into republics; the
strange fate that has, more recently, been pursuing the sovereigns of
Holland, of Norway, of Greece, of Yugoslavia and of Albania now
living in exile; the virtual abdication of the authority exercised by
the kings of Denmark, of Belgium, of Bulgaria, of Rumania and of
Italy; the apprehension with which their fellow sovereigns must be
viewing the convulsions that have seized so many thrones; the shame
and acts of violence which, in some instances, have darkened the
annals of the reigns of certain monarchs in both the East and the
West, and still more recently the sudden downfall of the Founder of
the newly established dynasty in Persia — these are yet further
instances of the infliction of the “Divine Chastisement”
foreshadowed by Bahá’u’lláh in that immortal Súrih, and show
forth the divine reality of the arraignment pronounced by Him against
the rulers of the earth in His Most Holy Book.
No less arresting has been the extinction of the all-pervasive
influence exerted by the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders, both Sunní
and Shí‘ah, in the two countries in which the mightiest
institutions of Islám had been reared, and which have been directly
associated with the tribulations heaped upon the Báb and
Bahá’u’lláh.
The Caliph, the self-styled vicar of the Prophet of Islám, known
also as the “Commander of the Faithful,” the protector of the
holy cities of Mecca and Medina, whose spiritual jurisdiction
extended over more than two hundred million Muḥammadans, was by the
abolition of the Sultanate in Turkey, divested of his temporal
authority, hitherto regarded as inseparable from his high office. The
Caliph himself, after having occupied for a brief period, an
anomalous and precarious position, fled to Europe; the Caliphate, the
most august and powerful institution of Islám, was, without
consultation with any community in the Sunní world, summarily
abolished; the unity of the most powerful branch of the Islamic Faith
was thereby shattered; a formal, a complete and permanent separation
of the Turkish state from the Sunní faith was proclaimed; the
Sharí‘ah canonical Law was annulled; ecclesiastical
institutions were disendowed; a civil code was promulgated; religious
orders were suppressed; the Sunní hierarchy was dissolved; the
Arabic tongue, the language of the Prophet of Islám, fell into
disuse, and its script was superseded by the Latin alphabet; the
Qur’án itself was translated into Turkish; Constantinople, the
“Dome of Islám,” sank to the level of a provincial city, and its
peerless jewel, the Mosque of St. Sophia, was converted into a
museum — a series of degradations recalling the fate which, in the
first century of the Christian Era, befell the Jewish people, the
city of Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, the Holy of Holies, and an
ecclesiastical hierarchy, whose members were the avowed persecutors
of the religion of Jesus Christ.
A similar convulsion shook the foundations of the entire sacerdotal
order in Persia, though its formal divorce from the Persian state is
as yet unproclaimed. A “church-state,” that had been firmly
rooted in the life of the nation and had extended its ramifications
to every sphere of life in that country, was virtually disrupted. A
sacerdotal order, the rock wall of Shí‘ah Islám in that
land, was paralyzed and discredited; its mujtahids, the favorite
ministers of the hidden Imám, were reduced to an insignificant
number; all its beturbaned officers, except for a handful, were
ruthlessly forced to exchange their traditional head-dress and robes
for the European clothes they themselves anathematized; the pomp and
pageantry that marked their ceremonials vanished; their fatvás
(sentences) were nullified; their endowments were handed over to a
civil administration; their mosques and seminaries were deserted; the
right of sanctuary accorded to their shrines ceased to be recognized;
their religious plays were banned; their takyihs were closed and even
their pilgrimages to Najaf and Karbilá were discouraged and
curtailed. The disuse of the veil; the recognition of the equality of
sexes; the establishment of civil tribunals; the abolition of
concubinage; the disparagement of the use of the Arabic tongue, the
language of Islám and of the Qur’án, and the efforts exerted to
divorce it from Persian — all these further proclaim the degradation,
and foreshadow the final extinction, of that infamous crew, whose
leaders had dared style themselves “servants of the Lord of
Saintship” (Imám ‘Alí), who had so often received the homage of
the pious kings of the Ṣafaví dynasty, and whose anathemas, ever
since the birth of the Faith of the Báb, had been chiefly
responsible for the torrents of blood which had been shed, and whose
acts have blackened the annals of both their religion and nation.
A crisis, not indeed as severe as that which shook the Islamic
sacerdotal orders — the inveterate adversaries of the Faith — has,
moreover, afflicted the ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom,
whose influence, ever since Bahá’u’lláh’s summons was issued
and His warning was sounded, has visibly deteriorated, whose prestige
has been gravely damaged, whose authority has steadily declined, and
whose power, rights and prerogatives have been increasingly
circumscribed. The virtual extinction of the temporal sovereignty of
the Roman Pontiff, to which reference has already been made; the wave
of anti-clericalism that brought in its wake the separation of the
Catholic Church from the French Republic; the organized assault
launched by a triumphant Communist state upon the Greek Orthodox
Church in Russia, and the consequent disestablishment, disendowment
and persecution of the state religion; the dismemberment of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy which owed its allegiance to the Church of
Rome and powerfully supported its institutions; the ordeal to which
that same Church has been subjected in Spain and in Mexico; the wave
of secularization which, at present, is engulfing the Catholic, the
Anglican and the Presbyterian Missions in non-Christian lands; the
forces of an aggressive paganism which are assailing the ancient
citadels of the Catholic, the Greek Orthodox and the Lutheran
Churches in Western, in Central and Eastern Europe, in the Balkans
and in the Baltic and Scandinavian states — these stand out as the
most conspicuous manifestations of the decline in the fortunes of the
ecclesiastical leaders of Christendom, leaders who, heedless of the
voice of Bahá’u’lláh, have interposed themselves between the
Christ returned in the glory of the Father and their respective
congregations.
Nor can we fail to note the progressive deterioration in the
authority, wielded by the ecclesiastical leaders of the Jewish and
Zoroastrian Faiths, ever since the voice of Bahá’u’lláh was
raised, announcing, in no uncertain terms, that the “Most Great
Law is come,”
that the Ancient Beauty “ruleth upon the
throne of David,”
and that “whatsoever hath been announced
in the Books (Zoroastrian Holy Writ) hath been revealed and
made clear.”
The evidences of increasing revolt against
clerical authority; the disrespect and indifference shown to
time-honored observances, rituals and ceremonials; the repeated
inroads made by the forces of an aggressive and often hostile
nationalism into the spheres of clerical jurisdiction; and the
general apathy with which, particularly in the case of the professed
adherents of the Zoroastrian Faith, these encroachments are
regarded — all provide, beyond the shadow of a doubt, further
justification of the warnings and predictions uttered by Bahá’u’lláh
in His historic addresses to the world’s ecclesiastical leaders.
Such in sum are the awful evidences of God’s retributive justice
that have afflicted kings as well as ecclesiastics, in both the East
and the West, as a direct consequence of either their active
opposition to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, or of their lamentable
failure to respond to His call, to inquire into His Message, to avert
the sufferings He endured, or to heed the marvelous signs and
prodigies which, during a hundred years, have accompanied the birth
and rise of His Revelation.
“From two ranks amongst men,”
is His terse and prophetic
utterance, “power hath been seized: kings and ecclesiastics.”
“If ye pay no heed,”
He thus warned the kings of the
earth, “unto the counsels which … We have revealed in this
Tablet, Divine chastisement will assail you from every direction …
On that day ye shall … recognize your own impotence.”
And
again: “Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye,
nevertheless, have failed to stay the hand of the aggressor.”
And, furthermore, this arraignment: “…We … will be patient,
as We have been patient in that which hath befallen Us at your hands,
O concourse of kings!”
Condemning specifically the world’s ecclesiastical leaders, He has
written: “The source and origin of tyranny have been the divines
… God, verily, is clear of them, and We, too, are clear of them.”
“When We observed carefully,”
He openly affirms, “We
discovered that Our enemies are, for the most part, the divines.”
“O concourse of divines!”
He thus addresses them, “Ye
shall not henceforth behold yourselves possessed of any power,
inasmuch as We have seized it from you…”
“Had ye
believed in God when He revealed Himself,”
He explains, “the
people would not have turned aside from Him, nor would the things ye
witness today have befallen Us.”
“They,”
referring
more specifically to Muslim ecclesiastics, He asserts, “rose up
against Us with such cruelty as hath sapped the strength of Islám…”
“The divines of Persia,”
He affirms, “committed that
which no people amongst the peoples of the world hath committed.”
And again: “…The divines of Persia … have perpetrated what
the Jews have not perpetrated during the Revelation of Him Who is the
Spirit (Jesus).”
And finally, these portentous
prophecies: “Because of you the people were abased, and the
banner of Islám was hauled down, and its mighty throne subverted.”
“Erelong will all that ye possess perish, and your glory be
turned into the most wretched abasement, and ye shall behold the
punishment for what ye have wrought…”
“Erelong,”
the Báb Himself, even more openly prophesies, “We will, in very
truth, torment such as waged war against Ḥusayn (Imám Ḥusayn)
… with the most afflictive torment…”
“Erelong will God
wreak His vengeance upon them, at the time of Our return, and He
hath, in very truth, prepared for them, in the world to come, a
severe torment.”
Nor should, in a review of this nature, reference be omitted to those
princes, ministers and ecclesiastics who have individually been
responsible for the afflictive trials which Bahá’u’lláh and His
followers have suffered. Fu’ád Páshá, the Turkish
Minister for Foreign Affairs, denounced by Him as the “instigator”
of His banishment to the Most Great Prison, who had so assiduously
striven with his colleague ‘Alí Páshá, to excite the
fears and suspicions of a despot already predisposed against the
Faith and its Leader, was, about a year after he had succeeded in
executing his design, struck down, while on a trip to Paris, by the
avenging rod of God, and died at Nice (1869). ‘Alí Páshá,
the Ṣadr-i-A‘ẓam (Prime Minister), denounced in such forceful
language in the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís, whose downfall the Lawḥ-i-Fu’ád
had unmistakably predicted, was, a few years after Bahá’u’lláh’s
banishment to ‘Akká, dismissed from office, was shorn of all
power, and sank into complete oblivion. The tyrannical Prince Mas‘úd
Mírzá, the Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán, Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh’s
eldest son and ruler over more than two-fifths of his kingdom,
stigmatized by Bahá’u’lláh as “the Infernal Tree,”
fell into disgrace, was deprived of all his governorships, except
that of Iṣfahán, and lost all chances of future eminence or
promotion. The rapacious Prince Jalálu’d-Dawlih, branded by the
Supreme Pen as “the tyrant of Yazd,”
was, about a year
after the iniquities he had perpetrated, deprived of his post,
recalled to Ṭihrán, and forced to return a part of the property he
had stolen from his victims.
The scheming, the ambitious and profligate Mírzá Buzurg Khán,
the Persian Consul General in Baghdád, was eventually
dismissed from office, “overwhelmed with disaster, filled with
remorse and plunged into confusion.” The notorious Mujtahid Siyyid
Ṣádiq-i-Ṭabáṭabá’í, denounced by Bahá’u’lláh as
“the Liar of Ṭihrán,”
the author of the monstrous
decree condemning every male member of the Bahá’í community in
Persia, young or old, high or low, to be put to death, and all its
women to be deported, was suddenly taken ill, fell a prey to a
disease that ravaged his heart, his brain and his limbs, and
precipitated eventually his death. The high-handed Ṣubḥí Páshá,
who had peremptorily summoned Bahá’u’lláh to the government
house in ‘Akká, lost the position he occupied, and was recalled
under circumstances highly detrimental to his reputation. Nor were
the other governors of the city, who had dealt unjustly with the
exalted Prisoner in their charge and His fellow-exiles, spared a like
fate. “Every páshá,” testifies Nabíl in his narrative,
“whose conduct in ‘Akká was commendable enjoyed a long term of
office, and was bountifully favored by God, whereas every hostile
Mutiṣarrif (governor) was speedily deposed by the Hand of Divine
power, even as ‘Abdu’r-Raḥmán Páshá and
Muḥammad-Yúsuf Páshá who, on the morrow of the very night
they had resolved to lay hands on the loved ones of Bahá’u’lláh,
were telegraphically advised of their dismissal. Such was their fate
that they were never again given a position.”
Shaykh Muḥammad-Báqir, surnamed the “Wolf,” who,
in the strongly condemnatory Lawḥ-i-Burhán addressed to him by
Bahá’u’lláh, had been compared to “the last trace of
sunlight upon the mountain-top,”
witnessed the steady decline
of his prestige, and died in a miserable state of acute remorse. His
accomplice, Mír Muḥammad-Ḥusayn, surnamed the “She-Serpent,”
whom Bahá’u’lláh described as one “infinitely more wicked
than the oppressor of Karbilá,”
was, about that same time,
expelled from Iṣfahán, wandered from village to village,
contracted a disease that engendered so foul an odor that even his
wife and daughter could not bear to approach him, and died in such
ill-favor with the local authorities that no one dared to attend his
funeral, his corpse being ignominiously interred by a few porters.
Mention should, moreover, be made of the devastating famine which,
about a year after the illustrious Badí‘ had been tortured to
death, ravaged Persia and reduced the population to such extremities
that even the rich went hungry, and hundreds of mothers ghoulishly
devoured their own children.
Nor can this subject be dismissed without special reference being
made to the Arch-Breaker of the Covenant of the Báb, Mírzá Yaḥyá,
who lived long enough to witness, while eking out a miserable
existence in Cyprus, termed by the Turks “the Island of Satan,”
every hope he had so maliciously conceived reduced to naught. A
pensioner first of the Turkish and later of the British Government,
he was subjected to the further humiliation of having his application
for British citizenship refused. Eleven of the eighteen “Witnesses”
he had appointed forsook him and turned in repentance to Bahá’u’lláh.
He himself became involved in a scandal which besmirched his
reputation and that of his eldest son, deprived that son and his
descendants of the successorship with which he had previously
invested him, and appointed, in his stead, the perfidious Mírzá
Hádíy-i-Dawlat-Ábádí, a notorious Azalí, who, on the occasion
of the martyrdom of the aforementioned Mírzá Ashraf, was
seized with such fear that during four consecutive days he proclaimed
from the pulpit-top, and in a most vituperative language, his
complete repudiation of the Bábí Faith, as well as of Mírzá
Yaḥyá, his benefactor, who had reposed in him such implicit
confidence. It was this same eldest son who, through the workings of
a strange destiny, sought years after, together with his nephew and
niece, the presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the appointed
Successor of Bahá’u’lláh and Center of His Covenant, expressed
repentance, prayed for forgiveness, was graciously accepted by Him,
and remained, till the hour of his death, a loyal follower of the
Faith which his father had so foolishly, so shamelessly and so
pitifully striven to extinguish.
I have in the preceding chapters endeavored to trace the rise and
progress of the Faith associated with the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh
during the first fifty years of its existence. If I have dwelt too
long on the events connected with the life and mission of these twin
Luminaries of the Bahá’í Revelation, if I have at times indulged
in too circumstantial a narrative of certain episodes related to
their ministries, it is solely because these happenings proclaim the
birth, and signalize the establishment, of an epoch which future
historians will acclaim as the most heroic, the most tragic and the
most momentous period in the Apostolic Age of the Bahá’í
Dispensation. Indeed the tale which the subsequent decades of the
century under review unfold to our eyes is but the record of the
manifold evidences of the resistless operation of those creative
forces which the revolution of fifty years of almost uninterrupted
Revelation had released.
A dynamic process, divinely propelled, possessed of undreamt-of
potentialities, world-embracing in scope, world-transforming in its
ultimate consequences, had been set in motion on that memorable night
when the Báb communicated the purpose of His mission to Mullá
Ḥusayn in an obscure corner of Shíráz. It acquired a
tremendous momentum with the first intimations of Bahá’u’lláh’s
dawning Revelation amidst the darkness of the Síyáh-Chál of
Ṭihrán. It was further accelerated by the Declaration of His
mission on the eve of His banishment from Baghdád. It moved
to a climax with the proclamation of that same mission during the
tempestuous years of His exile in Adrianople. Its full significance
was disclosed when the Author of that Mission issued His historic
summonses, appeals and warnings to the kings of the earth and the
world’s ecclesiastical leaders. It was finally consummated by the
laws and ordinances which He formulated, by the principles which He
enunciated and by the institutions which He ordained during the
concluding years of His ministry in the prison-city of ‘Akká.
To direct and canalize these forces let loose by this Heaven-sent
process, and to insure their harmonious and continuous operation
after His ascension, an instrument divinely ordained, invested with
indisputable authority, organically linked with the Author of the
Revelation Himself, was clearly indispensable. That instrument
Bahá’u’lláh had expressly provided through the institution of
the Covenant, an institution which He had firmly established prior to
His ascension. This same Covenant He had anticipated in His
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, had alluded to it as He bade His last farewell to the
members of His family, who had been summoned to His bed-side, in the
days immediately preceding His ascension, and had incorporated it in
a special document which He designated as “the Book of My
Covenant,” and which He entrusted, during His last illness, to His
eldest son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
Written entirely in His own hand; unsealed, on the ninth day after
His ascension in the presence of nine witnesses chosen from amongst
His companions and members of His Family; read subsequently, on the
afternoon of that same day, before a large company assembled in His
Most Holy Tomb, including His sons, some of the Báb’s kinsmen,
pilgrims and resident believers, this unique and epoch-making
Document, designated by Bahá’u’lláh as His “Most Great
Tablet,” and alluded to by Him as the “Crimson Book” in His
“Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,” can find no parallel in the
Scriptures of any previous Dispensation, not excluding that of the
Báb Himself. For nowhere in the books pertaining to any of the
world’s religious systems, not even among the writings of the
Author of the Bábí Revelation, do we find any single document
establishing a Covenant endowed with an authority comparable to the
Covenant which Bahá’u’lláh had Himself instituted.
Its significance
“So firm and mighty is this Covenant,”
He Who is its
appointed Center has affirmed, “that from the beginning of time
until the present day no religious Dispensation hath produced its
like.”
“It is indubitably clear,”
He, furthermore,
has stated, “that the pivot of the oneness of mankind is nothing
else but the power of the Covenant.”
“Know thou,”
He
has written, “that the ‘Sure Handle’ mentioned from the
foundation of the world in the Books, the Tablets and the Scriptures
of old is naught else but the Covenant and the Testament.”
And
again: “The lamp of the Covenant is the light of the world, and
the words traced by the Pen of the Most High a limitless ocean.”
“The Lord, the All-Glorified,”
He has moreover declared,
“hath, beneath the shade of the Tree of Anísá (Tree of
Life), made a new Covenant and established a great Testament …
Hath such a Covenant been established in any previous Dispensation,
age, period or century? Hath such a Testament, set down by the Pen of
the Most High, ever been witnessed? No, by God!”
And finally:
“The power of the Covenant is as the heat of the sun which
quickeneth and promoteth the development of all created things on
earth. The light of the Covenant, in like manner, is the educator of
the minds, the spirits, the hearts and souls of men.”
To this
same Covenant He has in His writings referred as the “Conclusive
Testimony,”
the “Universal Balance,”
the “Magnet
of God’s grace,”
the “Upraised Standard,”
the
“Irrefutable Testament,”
“the all-mighty Covenant,
the like of which the sacred Dispensations of the past have never
witnessed”
and “one of the distinctive features of this
most mighty cycle.”
Extolled by the writer of the Apocalypse as “the Ark of His (God)
Testament”
; associated with the gathering beneath the “Tree of
Anísá”
(Tree of Life) mentioned by Bahá’u’lláh in the
Hidden Words; glorified by Him, in other passages of His writings, as
the “Ark of Salvation”
and as “the Cord stretched
betwixt the earth and the Abhá Kingdom,”
this Covenant has
been bequeathed to posterity in a Will and Testament which, together
with the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and several Tablets, in which the rank and
station of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are unequivocally disclosed,
constitute the chief buttresses designed by the Lord of the Covenant
Himself to shield and support, after His ascension, the appointed
Center of His Faith and the Delineator of its future institutions.
Salient features of the Book of His Covenant
In this weighty and incomparable Document its Author discloses the
character of that “excellent and priceless Heritage”
bequeathed by Him to His “heirs”
; proclaims afresh the
fundamental purpose of His Revelation; enjoins the “peoples of
the world”
to hold fast to that which will “elevate”
their “station”
; announces to them that “God hath
forgiven what is past”
; stresses the sublimity of man’s
station; discloses the primary aim of the Faith of God; directs the
faithful to pray for the welfare of the kings of the earth, “the
manifestations of the power, and the daysprings of the might and
riches, of God”
; invests them with the rulership of the earth;
singles out as His special domain the hearts of men; forbids
categorically strife and contention; commands His followers to aid
those rulers who are “adorned with the ornament of equity and
justice”
; and directs, in particular, the Aghṣán (His
sons) to ponder the “mighty force and the consummate power that
lieth concealed in the world of being.”
He bids them, moreover,
together with the Afnán (the Báb’s kindred) and His own
relatives, to “turn, one and all, unto the Most Great Branch
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá)”
; identifies Him with “the One
Whom God hath purposed,”
“Who hath branched from this
pre-existent Root,”
referred to in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas; ordains
the station of the “Greater Branch”
(Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí) to be beneath that of the “Most Great
Branch”
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá); exhorts the believers to
treat the Aghṣán with consideration and affection; counsels
them to respect His family and relatives, as well as the kindred of
the Báb; denies His sons “any right to the property of others”
;
enjoins on them, on His kindred and on that of the Báb to “fear
God, to do that which is meet and seemly”
and to follow the
things that will “exalt”
their station; warns all men not
to allow “the means of order to be made the cause of confusion,
and the instrument of union an occasion for discord”
; and
concludes with an exhortation calling upon the faithful to “serve
all nations,”
and to strive for the “betterment of the
world.”
That such a unique and sublime station should have been conferred
upon ‘Abdu’l-Bahá did not, and indeed could not, surprise
those exiled companions who had for so long been privileged to
observe His life and conduct, nor the pilgrims who had been brought,
however fleetingly, into personal contact with Him, nor indeed the
vast concourse of the faithful who, in distant lands, had grown to
revere His name and to appreciate His labors, nor even the wide
circle of His friends and acquaintances who, in the Holy Land and the
adjoining countries, were already well familiar with the position He
had occupied during the lifetime of His Father.
He it was Whose auspicious birth occurred on that
never-to-be-forgotten night when the Báb laid bare the
transcendental character of His Mission to His first disciple Mullá
Ḥusayn. He it was Who, as a mere child, seated on the lap of
Ṭáhirih, had registered the thrilling significance of the stirring
challenge which that indomitable heroine had addressed to her
fellow-disciple, the erudite and far-famed Vaḥíd. He it was Whose
tender soul had been seared with the ineffaceable vision of a Father,
haggard, dishevelled, freighted with chains, on the occasion of a
visit, as a boy of nine, to the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán.
Against Him, in His early childhood, whilst His Father lay a prisoner
in that dungeon, had been directed the malice of a mob of street
urchins who pelted Him with stones, vilified Him and overwhelmed Him
with ridicule. His had been the lot to share with His Father, soon
after His release from imprisonment, the rigors and miseries of a
cruel banishment from His native land, and the trials which
culminated in His enforced withdrawal to the mountains of Kurdistán.
He it was Who, in His inconsolable grief at His separation from an
adored Father, had confided to Nabíl, as attested by him in his
narrative, that He felt Himself to have grown old though still but a
child of tender years. His had been the unique distinction of
recognizing, while still in His childhood, the full glory of His
Father’s as yet unrevealed station, a recognition which had
impelled Him to throw Himself at His feet and to spontaneously
implore the privilege of laying down His life for His sake. From His
pen, while still in His adolescence in Baghdád, had issued
that superb commentary on a well-known Muḥammadan tradition,
written at the suggestion of Bahá’u’lláh, in answer to a
request made by ‘Alí-Shawkat Páshá, which was so
illuminating as to excite the unbounded admiration of its recipient.
It was His discussions and discourses with the learned doctors with
whom He came in contact in Baghdád that first aroused that
general admiration for Him and for His knowledge which was steadily
to increase as the circle of His acquaintances was widened, at a
later date, first in Adrianople and then in ‘Akká. It was to Him
that the highly accomplished Khurshíd Páshá,
the governor of Adrianople, had been moved to pay a public and
glowing tribute when, in the presence of a number of distinguished
divines of that city, his youthful Guest had, briefly and amazingly,
resolved the intricacies of a problem that had baffled the minds of
the assembled company — an achievement that affected so deeply the
Páshá that from that time onwards he could hardly reconcile
himself to that Youth’s absence from such gatherings.
Role played by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during the ministry of His Father
On Him Bahá’u’lláh, as the scope and influence of His Mission
extended, had been led to place an ever greater degree of reliance,
by appointing Him, on numerous occasions, as His deputy, by enabling
Him to plead His Cause before the public, by assigning Him the task
of transcribing His Tablets, by allowing Him to assume the
responsibility of shielding Him from His enemies, and by investing
Him with the function of watching over and promoting the interests of
His fellow-exiles and companions. He it was Who had been commissioned
to undertake, as soon as circumstances might permit, the delicate and
all-important task of purchasing the site that was to serve as the
permanent resting-place of the Báb, of insuring the safe transfer of
His remains to the Holy Land, and of erecting for Him a befitting
sepulcher on Mt. Carmel. He it was Who had been chiefly instrumental
in providing the necessary means for Bahá’u’lláh’s release
from His nine-year confinement within the city walls of ‘Akká, and
in enabling Him to enjoy, in the evening of His life, a measure of
that peace and security from which He had so long been debarred. It
was through His unremitting efforts that the illustrious Badí‘ had
been granted his memorable interviews with Bahá’u’lláh, that
the hostility evinced by several governors of ‘Akká towards the
exiled community had been transmuted into esteem and admiration, that
the purchase of properties adjoining the Sea of Galilee and the River
Jordan had been effected, and that the ablest and most valuable
presentation of the early history of the Faith and of its tenets had
been transmitted to posterity. It was through the extraordinarily
warm reception accorded Him during His visit to Beirut, through His
contact with Midḥat Páshá, a former Grand Vizir of Turkey,
through His friendship with ‘Azíz Páshá, whom He had
previously known in Adrianople, and who had subsequently been
promoted to the rank of Valí, and through His constant association
with officials, notables and leading ecclesiastics who, in increasing
number had besought His presence, during the final years of His
Father’s ministry, that He had succeeded in raising the prestige of
the Cause He had championed to a level it had never previously
attained.
He alone had been accorded the privilege of being called “the
Master,”
an honor from which His Father had strictly excluded
all His other sons. Upon Him that loving and unerring Father had
chosen to confer the unique title of “Sirru’lláh”
(the
Mystery of God), a designation so appropriate to One Who, though
essentially human and holding a station radically and fundamentally
different from that occupied by Bahá’u’lláh and His Forerunner,
could still claim to be the perfect Exemplar of His Faith, to be
endowed with super-human knowledge, and to be regarded as the
stainless mirror reflecting His light. To Him, whilst in Adrianople,
that same Father had, in the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn (Tablet of the
Branch), referred as “this sacred and glorious Being, this
Branch of Holiness,”
as “the Limb of the Law of God,”
as His “most great favor”
unto men, as His “most
perfect bounty”
conferred upon them, as One through Whom “every
mouldering bone is quickened,”
declaring that “whoso
turneth towards Him hath turned towards God,”
and that “they
who deprive themselves of the shadow of the Branch are lost in the
wilderness of error.”
To Him He, whilst still in that city, had
alluded (in a Tablet addressed to Ḥájí Muḥammad
Ibráhím-i-Khalíl) as the one amongst His sons “from
Whose tongue God will cause the signs of His power to stream forth,”
and as the one Whom “God hath specially chosen for His Cause.”
On Him, at a later period, the Author of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, in a
celebrated passage, subsequently elucidated in the “Book of My
Covenant,”
had bestowed the function of interpreting His Holy
Writ, proclaiming Him, at the same time, to be the One “Whom God
hath purposed, Who hath branched from this Ancient Root.”
To
Him in a Tablet, revealed during that same period and addressed to
Mírzá Muḥammad Qulíy-i-Sabzivárí, He had referred as “the
Gulf that hath branched out of this Ocean that hath encompassed all
created things,”
and bidden His followers to turn their faces
towards it. To Him, on the occasion of His visit to Beirut, His
Father had, furthermore, in a communication which He dictated to His
amanuensis, paid a glowing tribute, glorifying Him as the One “round
Whom all names revolve,”
as “the Most Mighty Branch of
God,”
and as “His ancient and immutable Mystery.”
He
it was Who, in several Tablets which Bahá’u’lláh Himself had
penned, had been personally addressed as “the Apple of Mine
eye,”
and been referred to as “a shield unto all who are
in heaven and on earth,”
as “a shelter for all mankind”
and “a stronghold for whosoever hath believed in God.”
It
was on His behalf that His Father, in a prayer revealed in His honor,
had supplicated God to “render Him victorious,”
and to
“ordain … for Him, as well as for them that love Him,”
the things destined by the Almighty for His “Messengers”
and the “Trustees”
of His Revelation. And finally in yet
another Tablet these weighty words had been recorded: “The glory
of God rest upon Thee, and upon whosoever serveth Thee and circleth
around Thee. Woe, great woe, betide him that opposeth and injureth
Thee. Well is it with him that sweareth fealty to Thee; the fire of
hell torment him who is Thy enemy.”
And now to crown the inestimable honors, privileges and benefits
showered upon Him, in ever increasing abundance, throughout the forty
years of His Father’s ministry in Baghdád, in Adrianople
and in ‘Akká, He had been elevated to the high office of Center of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant, and been made the successor of the
Manifestation of God Himself — a position that was to empower Him to
impart an extraordinary impetus to the international expansion of His
Father’s Faith, to amplify its doctrine, to beat down every barrier
that would obstruct its march, and to call into being, and delineate
the features of, its Administrative Order, the Child of the Covenant,
and the Harbinger of that World Order whose establishment must needs
signalize the advent of the Golden Age of the Bahá’í
Dispensation.
The immediate effect of the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh had been,
as already observed, to spread grief and bewilderment among His
followers and companions, and to inspire its vigilant and redoubtable
adversaries with fresh hope and renewed determination. At a time when
a grievously traduced Faith had triumphantly emerged from the two
severest crises it had ever known, one the work of enemies without,
the other the work of enemies within, when its prestige had risen to
a height unequalled in any period during its fifty-year existence,
the unerring Hand which had shaped its destiny ever since its
inception was suddenly removed, leaving a gap which friend and foe
alike believed could never again be filled.
Yet, as the appointed Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant and
the authorized Interpreter of His teaching had Himself later
explained, the dissolution of the tabernacle wherein the soul of the
Manifestation of God had chosen temporarily to abide signalized its
release from the restrictions which an earthly life had, of
necessity, imposed upon it. Its influence no longer circumscribed by
any physical limitations, its radiance no longer beclouded by its
human temple, that soul could henceforth energize the whole world to
a degree unapproached at any stage in the course of its existence on
this planet.
Bahá’u’lláh’s stupendous task on this earthly plane had,
moreover, at the time of His passing, been brought to its final
consummation. His mission, far from being in any way inconclusive,
had, in every respect, been carried through to a full end. The
Message with which He had been entrusted had been disclosed to the
gaze of all mankind. The summons He had been commissioned to issue to
its leaders and rulers had been fearlessly voiced. The fundamentals
of the doctrine destined to recreate its life, heal its sicknesses
and redeem it from bondage and degradation had been impregnably
established. The tide of calamity that was to purge and fortify the
sinews of His Faith had swept on with unstemmed fury. The blood which
was to fertilize the soil out of which the institutions of His World
Order were destined to spring had been profusely shed. Above all the
Covenant that was to perpetuate the influence of that Faith, insure
its integrity, safeguard it from schism, and stimulate its world-wide
expansion, had been fixed on an inviolable basis.
His Cause, precious beyond the dreams and hopes of men; enshrining
within its shell that pearl of great price to which the world, since
its foundation, had been looking forward; confronted with colossal
tasks of unimaginable complexity and urgency, was beyond a
peradventure in safe keeping. His own beloved Son, the apple of His
eye, His vicegerent on earth, the Executive of His authority, the
Pivot of His Covenant, the Shepherd of His flock, the Exemplar of His
faith, the Image of His perfections, the Mystery of His Revelation,
the Interpreter of His mind, the Architect of His World Order, the
Ensign of His Most Great Peace, the Focal Point of His unerring
guidance — in a word, the occupant of an office without peer or equal
in the entire field of religious history — stood guard over it,
alert, fearless and determined to enlarge its limits, blazon abroad
its fame, champion its interests and consummate its purpose.
The stirring proclamation ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had penned,
addressed to the rank and file of the followers of His Father, on the
morrow of His ascension, as well as the prophecies He Himself had
uttered in His Tablets, breathed a resolve and a confidence which the
fruits garnered and the triumphs achieved in the course of a
thirty-year ministry have abundantly justified.
The cloud of despondency that had momentarily settled on the
disconsolate lovers of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh was lifted. The
continuity of that unerring guidance vouchsafed to it since its birth
was now assured. The significance of the solemn affirmation that this
is “the Day which shall not be followed by night”
was now
clearly apprehended. An orphan community had recognized in
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in its hour of desperate need, its Solace,
its Guide, its Mainstay and Champion. The Light that had glowed with
such dazzling brightness in the heart of Asia, and had, in the
lifetime of Bahá’u’lláh, spread to the Near East, and
illuminated the fringes of both the European and African continents,
was to travel, through the impelling influence of the newly
proclaimed Covenant, and almost immediately after the death of its
Author, as far West as the North American continent, and from thence
diffuse itself to the countries of Europe, and subsequently shed its
radiance over both the Far East and Australasia.
Before the Faith, however, could plant its banner in the midmost
heart of the North American continent, and from thence establish its
outposts over so vast a portion of the Western world, the newly born
Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh had, as had been the case with the
Faith that had given it birth, to be baptized with a fire which was
to demonstrate its solidity and proclaim its indestructibility to an
unbelieving world. A crisis, almost as severe as that which had
assailed the Faith in its earliest infancy in Baghdád, was to
shake that Covenant to its foundations at the very moment of its
inception, and subject afresh the Cause of which it was the noblest
fruit to one of the most grievous ordeals experienced in the course
of an entire century.
This crisis, misconceived as a schism, which political as well as
ecclesiastical adversaries, no less than the fast dwindling remnant
of the followers of Mírzá Yaḥyá hailed as a signal for the
immediate disruption and final dissolution of the system established
by Bahá’u’lláh, was precipitated at the very heart and center
of His Faith, and was provoked by no one less than a member of His
own family, a half-brother of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, specifically
named in the book of the Covenant, and holding a rank second to none
except Him Who had been appointed as the Center of that Covenant. For
no less than four years that emergency fiercely agitated the minds
and hearts of a vast proportion of the faithful throughout the East,
eclipsed, for a time, the Orb of the Covenant, created an irreparable
breach within the ranks of Bahá’u’lláh’s own kindred, sealed
ultimately the fate of the great majority of the members of His
family, and gravely damaged the prestige, though it never succeeded
in causing a permanent cleavage in the structure, of the Faith
itself. The true ground of this crisis was the burning, the
uncontrollable, the soul-festering jealousy which the admitted
preeminence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in rank, power, ability,
knowledge and virtue, above all the other members of His Father’s
family, had aroused not only in Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, the
archbreaker of the Covenant, but in some of his closest relatives as
well. An envy as blind as that which had possessed the soul of Mírzá
Yaḥyá, as deadly as that which the superior excellence of Joseph
had kindled in the hearts of his brothers, as deep-seated as that
which had blazed in the bosom of Cain and prompted him to slay his
brother Abel, had, for several years, prior to Bahá’u’lláh’s
ascension, been smouldering in the recesses of Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí’s heart and had been secretly inflamed by those
unnumbered marks of distinction, of admiration and favor accorded to
‘Abdu’l-Bahá not only by Bahá’u’lláh Himself, His
companions and His followers, but by the vast number of unbelievers
who had come to recognize that innate greatness which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
had manifested from childhood.
Far from being allayed by the provisions of a Will which had elevated
him to the second-highest position within the ranks of the faithful,
the fire of unquenchable animosity that glowed in the breast of Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí burned even more fiercely as soon as he came to
realize the full implications of that Document. All that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
could do, during a period of four distressful years, His incessant
exhortations, His earnest pleadings, the favors and kindnesses He
showered upon him, the admonitions and warnings He uttered, even His
voluntary withdrawal in the hope of averting the threatening storm,
proved to be of no avail. Gradually and with unyielding persistence,
through lies, half-truths, calumnies and gross exaggerations, this
“Prime Mover of sedition” succeeded in ranging on his side almost
the entire family of Bahá’u’lláh, as well as a considerable
number of those who had formed His immediate entourage. Bahá’u’lláh’s
two surviving wives, His two sons, the vacillating Mírzá
Ḍíyá’u’lláh and the treacherous Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh,
with their sister and half-sister and their husbands, one of them the
infamous Siyyid ‘Alí, a kinsman of the Báb, the other the crafty
Mírzá Majdi’d-Dín, together with his sister and
half-brothers — the children of the noble, the faithful and now
deceased Áqáy-i-Kalím — all united in a determined effort to
subvert the foundations of the Covenant which the newly proclaimed
Will had laid. Even Mírzá Áqá Ján, who for forty years had
labored as Bahá’u’lláh’s amanuensis, as well as
Muḥammad-Javád-i-Qazvíní, who ever since the days of Adrianople,
had been engaged in transcribing the innumerable Tablets revealed by
the Supreme Pen, together with his entire family, threw in their lot
with the Covenant-breakers, and allowed themselves to be ensnared by
their machinations.
Forsaken, betrayed, assaulted by almost the entire body of His
relatives, now congregated in the Mansion and the neighboring houses
clustering around the most Holy Tomb, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
already bereft of both His mother and His sons, and without any
support at all save that of an unmarried sister, His four unmarried
daughters, His wife and His uncle (a half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh),
was left alone to bear, in the face of a multitude of enemies arrayed
against Him from within and from without, the full brunt of the
terrific responsibilities which His exalted office had laid upon Him.
Accusations brought against ‘Abdu’l-Bahá by the Covenant-breakers
Closely-knit by one common wish and purpose; indefatigable in their
efforts; assured of the backing of the powerful and perfidious
Jamál-i-Burújirdí and his henchmen, Ḥájí Ḥusayn-i-Káshí,
Khalíl-i-Khu’í and Jalíl-i-Tabrízí who had
espoused their cause; linked by a vast system of correspondence with
every center and individual they could reach; seconded in their
labors by emissaries whom they dispatched to Persia, ‘Iráq, India
and Egypt; emboldened in their designs by the attitude of officials
whom they bribed or seduced, these repudiators of a
divinely-established Covenant arose, as one man, to launch a campaign
of abuse and vilification which compared in virulence with the
infamous accusations which Mírzá Yaḥyá and Siyyid Muḥammad had
jointly levelled at Bahá’u’lláh. To friend and stranger,
believer and unbeliever alike, to officials both high and low, openly
and by insinuation, verbally as well as in writing, they represented
‘Abdu’l-Bahá as an ambitious, a self-willed, an
unprincipled and pitiless usurper, Who had deliberately disregarded
the testamentary instructions of His Father; Who had, in language
intentionally veiled and ambiguous, assumed a rank co-equal with the
Manifestation Himself; Who in His communications with the West was
beginning to claim to be the return of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
who had come “in the glory of the Father”
; Who, in His
letters to the Indian believers, was proclaiming Himself as the
promised Sháh Bahrám, and arrogating to Himself the right to
interpret the writing of His Father, to inaugurate a new
Dispensation, and to share with Him the Most Great Infallibility, the
exclusive prerogative of the holders of the prophetic office. They,
furthermore, affirmed that He had, for His private ends, fomented
discord, fostered enmity and brandished the weapon of
excommunication; that He had perverted the purpose of a Testament
which they alleged to be primarily concerned with the private
interests of Bahá’u’lláh’s family by acclaiming it as a
Covenant of world importance, prë-existent, peerless and unique in
the history of all religions; that He had deprived His brothers and
sisters of their lawful allowance, and expended it on officials for
His personal advancement; that He had declined all the repeated
invitations made to Him to discuss the issues that had arisen and to
compose the differences which prevailed; that He had actually
corrupted the Holy Text, interpolated passages written by Himself,
and perverted the purpose and meaning of some of the weightiest
Tablets revealed by the pen of His Father; and finally, that the
standard of rebellion had, as a result of such conduct, been raised
by the Oriental believers, that the community of the faithful had
been rent asunder, was rapidly declining and was doomed to
extinction.
Conduct of Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí and his associates
And yet it was this same Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí who, regarding
himself as the exponent of fidelity, the standard-bearer of the
“Unitarians,” the “Finger who points to his Master,” the
champion of the Holy Family, the spokesman of the Aghṣán,
the upholder of the Holy Writ, had, in the lifetime of Bahá’u’lláh,
so openly and shamelessly advanced in a written statement, signed and
sealed by him, the very claim now falsely imputed by him to
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, that his Father had, with His own hand,
chastised him. He it was who, when sent on a mission to India, had
tampered with the text of the holy writings entrusted to his care for
publication. He it was who had the impudence and temerity to tell
‘Abdu’l-Bahá to His face that just as ‘Umar had
succeeded in usurping the successorship of the Prophet Muḥammad,
he, too, felt himself able to do the same. He it was who, obsessed by
the fear that he might not survive ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, had, the
moment he had been assured by Him that all the honor he coveted
would, in the course of time, be his, swiftly rejoined that he had no
guarantee that he would outlive Him. He it was who, as testified by
Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh in his confession, written and published on
the occasion of his repentance and his short-lived reconciliation
with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, had, while Bahá’u’lláh’s body
was still awaiting interment, carried off, by a ruse, the two
satchels containing his Father’s most precious documents, entrusted
by Him, prior to His ascension, to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He it was
who, by an exceedingly adroit and simple forgery of a word recurring
in some of the denunciatory passages addressed by the Supreme Pen to
Mírzá Yaḥyá, and by other devices such as mutilation and
interpolation, had succeeded in making them directly applicable to a
Brother Whom he hated with such consuming passion. And lastly, it was
this same Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí who, as attested by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
in His Will, had, with circumspection and guile, conspired to take
His life, an intention indicated by the allusions made in a letter
written by Shu‘á‘u’lláh (Son of Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí), the original of which was enclosed in that same
Document by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
The Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh had, by acts such as these, and
others too numerous to recount, been manifestly violated. Another
blow, stunning in its first effects, had been administered to the
Faith and had caused its structure momentarily to tremble. The storm
foreshadowed by the writer of the Apocalypse had broken. The
“lightnings,”
the “thunders,”
the “earthquake”
which must needs accompany the revelation of the “Ark of His
Testament,”
had all come to pass.
References by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to the Covenant-breakers
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grief over so tragic a development,
following so swiftly upon His Father’s ascension, was such that,
despite the triumphs witnessed in the course of His ministry, it left
its traces upon Him till the end of His days. The intensity of the
emotions which this somber episode aroused within Him were
reminiscent of the effect produced upon Bahá’u’lláh by the dire
happenings precipitated by the rebellion of Mírzá Yaḥyá. “I
swear by the Ancient Beauty!,”
He wrote in one of His Tablets,
“So great is My sorrow and regret that My pen is paralyzed
between My fingers.”
“Thou seest Me,”
He, in a
prayer recorded in His Will, thus laments, “submerged in an
ocean of calamities that overwhelm the soul, of afflictions that
oppress the heart … Sore trials have compassed Me round, and perils
have from all sides beset Me. Thou seest Me immersed in a sea of
unsurpassed tribulation, sunk into a fathomless abyss, afflicted by
Mine enemies and consumed with the flame of hatred kindled by My
kinsmen with whom Thou didst make Thy strong Covenant and Thy firm
Testament…”
And again in that same Will: “Lord! Thou
seest all things weeping over Me, and My kindred rejoicing in My
woes. By Thy glory, O my God! Even amongst Mine enemies some have
lamented My troubles and My distress, and of the envious ones a
number have shed tears because of My cares, My exile and My
afflictions.”
“O Thou the Glory of Glories!,”
He, in
one of His last Tablets, had cried out, “I have renounced the
world and its people, and am heart-broken and sorely afflicted
because of the unfaithful. In the cage of this world I flutter even
as a frightened bird, and yearn every day to take My flight unto Thy
Kingdom.”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself had significantly revealed in one of His
Tablets — a Tablet that sheds an illuminating light on the entire
episode: “By God, O people! Mine eye weepeth, and the eye of
‘Alí (the Báb) weepeth amongst the Concourse on high, and
Mine heart crieth out, and the heart of Muḥammad crieth out within
the Most Glorious Tabernacle, and My soul shouteth and the souls of
the Prophets shout before them that are endued with understanding …
My sorrow is not for Myself, but for Him Who shall come after Me, in
the shadow of My Cause, with manifest and undoubted sovereignty,
inasmuch as they will not welcome His appearance, will repudiate His
signs, will dispute His sovereignty, will contend with Him, and will
betray His Cause…”
“Can it be possible,”
He, in a
no less significant Tablet, had observed, “that after the
dawning of the day-star of Thy Testament above the horizon of Thy
Most Great Tablet, the feet of any one shall slip in Thy Straight
Path? Unto this We answered: ‘O My most exalted Pen! It behoveth
Thee to occupy Thyself with that whereunto Thou hast been bidden by
God, the Exalted, the Great. Ask not of that which will consume Thine
heart and the hearts of the denizens of Paradise, who have circled
round My wondrous Cause. It behoveth Thee not to be acquainted with
that which We have veiled from Thee. Thy Lord is, verily, the
Concealer, the All-Knowing!’”
More specifically Bahá’u’lláh
had, referring to Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí in clear and unequivocal
language, affirmed: “He, verily, is but one of My servants …
Should he for a moment pass out from under the shadow of the Cause,
he surely shall be brought to naught.”
Furthermore, in a no
less emphatic language, He, again in connection with Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí had stated: “By God, the True One! Were We,
for a single instant, to withhold from him the outpourings of Our
Cause, he would wither, and would fall upon the dust.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself had, moreover, testified: “There
is no doubt that in a thousand passages in the sacred writings of
Bahá’u’lláh the breakers of the Covenant have been execrated.”
Some of these passages He Himself compiled, ere His departure from
this world, and incorporated them in one of His last Tablets, as a
warning and safeguard against those who, throughout His ministry, had
manifested so implacable a hatred against Him, and had come so near
to subverting the foundations of a Covenant on which not only His own
authority but the integrity of the Faith itself depended.
Though the rebellion of Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí precipitated many
sombre and distressing events, and though its dire consequences
continued for several years to obscure the light of the Covenant, to
endanger the life of its appointed Center, and to distract the
thoughts and retard the progress of the activities of its supporters
in both the East and the West, yet the entire episode, viewed in its
proper perspective, proved to be neither more nor less than one of
those periodic crises which, since the inception of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh, and throughout a whole century, have been
instrumental in weeding out its harmful elements, in fortifying its
foundations, in demonstrating its resilience, and in releasing a
further measure of its latent powers.
Now that the provisions of a divinely appointed Covenant had been
indubitably proclaimed; now that the purpose of the Covenant was
clearly apprehended and its fundamentals had become immovably
established in the hearts of the overwhelming majority of the
adherents of the Faith; and now that the first assaults launched by
its would-be subverters had been successfully repulsed, the Cause for
which that Covenant had been designed could forge ahead along the
course traced for it by the finger of its Author. Shining exploits
and unforgettable victories had already signalized the birth of that
Cause and accompanied its rise in several countries of the Asiatic
continent, and particularly in the homeland of its Founder. The
mission of its newly-appointed Leader, the steward of its glory and
the diffuser of its light, was, as conceived by Himself, to enrich
and extend the bounds of the incorruptible patrimony entrusted to His
hands by shedding the illumination of His Father’s Faith upon the
West, by expounding the fundamental precepts of that Faith and its
cardinal principles, by consolidating the activities which had
already been initiated for the promotion of its interests, and,
finally, by ushering in, through the provisions of His own Will, the
Formative Age in its evolution.
A year after the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
had, in a verse which He had revealed, and which had evoked the
derision of the Covenant-breakers, already foreshadowed an auspicious
event which posterity would recognize as one of the greatest triumphs
of His ministry, which in the end would confer an inestimable
blessing upon the western world, and which erelong was to dispel the
grief and the apprehensions that had surrounded the community of His
fellow-exiles in ‘Akká. The Great Republic of the West, above all
the other countries of the Occident, was singled out to be the first
recipient of God’s inestimable blessing, and to become the chief
agent in its transmission to so many of her sister nations throughout
the five continents of the earth.
References in Bahá’í sacred writings to the West and its future importance
The importance of so momentous a development in the evolution of the
Faith of Bahá’u’lláh — the establishment of His Cause in the
North American continent — at a time when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had
just inaugurated His Mission, and was still in the throes of the most
grievous crisis with which He was ever confronted, can in no wise be
overestimated. As far back as the year which witnessed the birth of
the Faith in Shíráz the Báb had, in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’,
after having warned in a memorable passage the peoples of both the
Orient and the Occident, directly addressed the “peoples of the
West,”
and significantly bidden them “issue forth”
from their “cities”
to aid God, and “become as
brethren”
in His “one and indivisible religion.”
“In
the East,”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself had, in anticipation of
this development, written, “the light of His Revelation hath
broken; in the West the signs of His dominion have appeared.”
“Should they attempt,”
He, moreover, had predicted, “to
conceal its light on the continent, it will assuredly rear its head
in the midmost heart of the ocean, and, raising its voice, proclaim:
‘I am the lifegiver of the world!’”
“Had this Cause
been revealed in the West,”
He, shortly before His ascension,
is reported by Nabíl in his narrative to have stated, “had Our
verses been sent from the West to Persia and other countries of the
East, it would have become evident how the people of the Occident
would have embraced Our Cause. The people of Persia, however, have
failed to appreciate it.”
“From the beginning of time
until the present day,”
is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s own
testimony, “the light of Divine Revelation hath risen in the
East and shed its radiance upon the West. The illumination thus shed
hath, however, acquired in the West an extraordinary brilliancy.
Consider the Faith proclaimed by Jesus. Though it first appeared in
the East, yet not until its light had been shed upon the West did the
full measure of its potentialities become manifest.”
“The
day is approaching,”
He has affirmed, “when ye shall
witness how, through the splendor of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh,
the West will have replaced the East, radiating the light of Divine
guidance.”
And again: “The West hath acquired illumination
from the East, but, in some respects, the reflection of the light
hath been greater in the Occident.”
Furthermore, “The East
hath, verily, been illumined with the light of the Kingdom. Erelong
will this same light shed a still greater illumination upon the
West.”
More specifically has the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation Himself
chosen to confer upon the rulers of the American continent the unique
honor of addressing them collectively in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, His most
Holy Book, significantly exhorting them to “adorn the temple of
dominion with the ornament of justice and of the fear of God, and its
head with the crown of the remembrance”
of their Lord, and
bidding them “bind with the hands of justice the broken,”
and “crush the oppressor”
with the “rod of the
commandments”
of their “Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.”
“The continent of America,”
wrote ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
“is, in the eyes of the one true God, the land wherein the
splendors of His light shall be revealed, where the mysteries of His
Faith shall be unveiled, where the righteous will abide and the free
assemble.”
“The American continent,”
He has
furthermore predicted, “giveth signs and evidences of very great
advancement. Its future is even more promising, for its influence and
illumination are far reaching. It will lead all nations spiritually.”
“The American people,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, even more
distinctly, singling out for His special favor the Great Republic of
the West, the leading nation of the American continent, has revealed,
“are indeed worthy of being the first to build the Tabernacle of
the Most Great Peace, and proclaim the oneness of mankind.”
And
again: “This American nation is equipped and empowered to
accomplish that which will adorn the pages of history, to become the
envy of the world, and be blest in both the East and the West for the
triumph of its people.”
Furthermore: “May this American
democracy be the first nation to establish the foundation of
international agreement. May it be the first nation to proclaim the
unity of mankind. May it be the first to unfurl the standard of the
Most Great Peace.”
“May the inhabitants of this country,”
He, moreover has written, “…rise from their present material
attainment to such heights that heavenly illumination may stream from
this center to all the peoples of the world.”
“O ye apostles of Bahá’u’lláh!,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá
has thus addressed the believers of the North American continent,
“…consider how exalted and lofty is the station you are
destined to attain … The full measure of your success is as yet
unrevealed, its significance still unapprehended.”
And again:
“Your mission is unspeakably glorious. Should success crown your
enterprise, America will assuredly evolve into a center from which
waves of spiritual power will emanate, and the throne of the Kingdom
of God, will in the plenitude of its majesty and glory, be firmly
established.”
And finally, this stirring affirmation: “The
moment this Divine Message is carried forward by the American
believers from the shores of America, and is propagated through the
continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australasia, and as
far as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself
securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion …
Then will the whole earth resound with the praises of its majesty and
greatness.”
Little wonder that a community belonging to a nation so abundantly
blessed, a nation occupying so eminent a position in a continent so
richly endowed, should have been able to add, during the fifty years
of its existence, many a page rich with victories to the annals of
the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. This is the community, it should be
remembered, which, ever since it was called into being through the
creative energies released by the proclamation of the Covenant of
Bahá’u’lláh, was nursed in the lap of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
unfailing solicitude, and was trained by Him to discharge its unique
mission through the revelation of innumerable Tablets, through the
instructions issued to returning pilgrims, through the despatch of
special messengers, through His own travels at a later date, across
the North American continent, through the emphasis laid by Him on the
institution of the Covenant in the course of those travels, and
finally through His mandate embodied in the Tablets of the Divine
Plan. This is the community which, from its earliest infancy until
the present day, has unremittingly labored and succeeded, through its
own unaided efforts, in implanting the banner of Bahá’u’lláh in
the vast majority of the sixty countries which, in both the East and
the West, can now claim the honor of being included within the pale
of His Faith. To this community belongs the distinction of having
evolved the pattern, and of having been the first to erect the
framework, of the administrative institutions that herald the advent
of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. Through the efforts of its
members the Mother Temple of the West, the Harbinger of that Order,
one of the noblest institutions ordained in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and
the most stately edifice reared in the entire Bahá’í world, has
been erected in the very heart of the North American continent.
Through the assiduous labors of its pioneers, its teachers and its
administrators, the literature of the Faith has been enormously
expanded, its aims and purposes fearlessly defended, and its nascent
institutions solidly established. In direct consequence of the
unsupported and indefatigable endeavors of the most distinguished of
its itinerant teachers the spontaneous allegiance of Royalty to the
Faith of Bahá’u’lláh has been secured and unmistakably
proclaimed in several testimonies transmitted to posterity by the pen
of the royal convert herself. And finally, to the members of this
community, the spiritual descendants of the dawn-breakers of the
Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation, must be ascribed the
eternal honor of having arisen, on numerous occasions, with marvelous
alacrity, zeal and determination, to champion the cause of the
oppressed, to relieve the needy, and to defend the interests of the
edifices and institutions reared by their brethren in countries such
as Persia, Russia, Egypt, ‘Iráq and Germany, countries where the
adherents of the Faith have had to sustain, in varying measure, the
rigors of racial and religious persecution.
Strange, indeed, that in a country, invested with such a unique
function among its sister-nations throughout the West, the first
public reference to the Author of so glorious a Faith should have
been made through the mouth of one of the members of that
ecclesiastical order with which that Faith has had so long to
contend, and from which it has frequently suffered. Stranger still
that he who first established it in the city of Chicago, fifty years
after the Báb had declared His Mission in Shíráz, should
himself have forsaken, a few years later, the standard which he,
single-handed, had implanted in that city.
It was on September 23, 1893, a little over a year after
Bahá’u’lláh’s ascension, that, in a paper written by Rev.
Henry H. Jessup, D.D., Director of Presbyterian Missionary Operations
in North Syria, and read by Rev. George A. Ford of Syria, at the
World Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, in connection with
the Columbian Exposition, commemorating the four-hundredth
anniversary of the discovery of America, it was announced that “a
famous Persian Sage,” “the Bábí Saint,” had died recently in
‘Akká, and that two years previous to His ascension “a Cambridge
scholar” had visited Him, to whom He had expressed “sentiments so
noble, so Christ-like” that the author of the paper, in his
“closing words,” wished to share them with his audience. Less
than a year later, in February 1894, a Syrian doctor, named Ibráhím
Khayru’lláh, who, while residing in Cairo, had been
converted by Ḥájí ‘Abdu’l-Karím-i-Ṭihrání to the Faith,
had received a Tablet from Bahá’u’lláh, had communicated with
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and reached New York in December 1892,
established his residence in Chicago, and began to teach actively and
systematically the Cause he had espoused. Within the space of two
years he had communicated his impressions to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
and reported on the remarkable success that had attended his efforts.
In 1895 an opening was vouchsafed to him in Kenosha, which he
continued to visit once a week, in the course of his teaching
activities. By the following year the believers in these two cities,
it was reported, were counted by hundreds. In 1897 he published his
book, entitled the Bábu’d-Dín, and visited Kansas City, New York
City, Ithaca and Philadelphia, where he was able to win for the Faith
a considerable number of supporters. The stout-hearted Thornton
Chase, surnamed Thábit (Steadfast) by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
and designated by Him “the first American believer,”
who
became a convert to the Faith in 1894, the immortal Louisa A. Moore,
the mother teacher of the West, surnamed Livá (Banner) by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Dr. Edward Getsinger, to whom she was later
married, Howard MacNutt, Arthur P. Dodge, Isabella D. Brittingham,
Lillian F. Kappes, Paul K. Dealy, Chester I. Thacher and Helen S.
Goodall, whose names will ever remain associated with the first
stirrings of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the North American
continent, stand out as the most prominent among those who, in those
early years, awakened to the call of the New Day, and consecrated
their lives to the service of the newly proclaimed Covenant.
By 1898 Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, the well-known philanthropist (wife of
Senator George F. Hearst), whom Mrs. Getsinger had, while on a visit
to California, attracted to the Faith, had expressed her intention of
visiting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the Holy Land, had invited
several believers, among them Dr. and Mrs. Getsinger, Dr. Khayru’lláh
and his wife, to join her, and had completed the necessary
arrangements for their historic pilgrimage to ‘Akká. In Paris
several resident Americans, among whom were May Ellis Bolles, whom
Mrs. Getsinger had won over to the Faith, Miss Pearson, and Ann
Apperson, both nieces of Mrs. Hearst, with Mrs. Thornburgh and her
daughter, were added to the party, the number of which was later
swelled in Egypt by the addition of Dr. Khayru’lláh’s
daughters and their grand-mother whom he had recently converted.
Arrival of the first Western pilgrims in ‘Akká
The arrival of fifteen pilgrims, in three successive parties, the
first of which, including Dr. and Mrs. Getsinger, reached the
prison-city of ‘Akká on December 10, 1898; the intimate personal
contact established between the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Covenant and the newly arisen heralds of His Revelation in the West;
the moving circumstances attending their visit to His Tomb and the
great honor bestowed upon them of being conducted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Himself into its innermost chamber; the spirit which, through precept
and example, despite the briefness of their stay, a loving and
bountiful Host so powerfully infused into them; and the passionate
zeal and unyielding resolve which His inspiring exhortations, His
illuminating instructions and the multiple evidences of His divine
love kindled in their hearts — all these marked the opening of a new
epoch in the development of the Faith in the West, an epoch whose
significance the acts subsequently performed by some of these same
pilgrims and their fellow-disciples have amply demonstrated.
“Of that first meeting,” one of these pilgrims, recording her
impressions, has written, “I can remember neither joy nor pain, nor
anything that I can name. I had been carried suddenly to too great a
height, my soul had come in contact with the Divine Spirit, and this
force, so pure, so holy, so mighty, had overwhelmed me … We could
not remove our eyes from His glorious face; we heard all that He
said; we drank tea with Him at His bidding; but existence seemed
suspended; and when He arose and suddenly left us, we came back with
a start to life; but never again, oh! never again, thank God, the
same life on this earth.” “In the might and majesty of His
presence,” that same pilgrim, recalling the last interview accorded
the party of which she was a member, has testified, “our fear was
turned to perfect faith, our weakness into strength, our sorrow into
hope, and ourselves forgotten in our love for Him. As we all sat
before Him, waiting to hear His words, some of the believers wept
bitterly. He bade them dry their tears, but they could not for a
moment. So again He asked them for His sake not to weep, nor would He
talk to us and teach us until all tears were banished…”
…“Those three days,” Mrs. Hearst herself has, in one of her
letters, testified, “were the most memorable days of my life …
The Master I will not attempt to describe: I will only state that I
believe with all my heart that He is the Master, and my greatest
blessing in this world is that I have been privileged to be in His
presence, and look upon His sanctified face … Without a doubt
‘Abbás Effendi is the Messiah of this day and generation, and we
need not look for another.” “I must say,” she, moreover, has in
another letter written, “He is the most wonderful Being I have ever
met or ever expect to meet in this world … The spiritual atmosphere
which surrounds Him and most powerfully affects all those who are
blest by being near Him, is indescribable … I believe in Him with
all my heart and soul, and I hope all who call themselves believers
will concede to Him all the greatness, all the glory, and all the
praise, for surely He is the Son of God — and ‘the spirit of the
Father abideth in Him.’”
Even Mrs. Hearst’s butler, a negro named Robert Turner, the first
member of his race to embrace the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh in the
West, had been transported by the influence exerted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
in the course of that epoch-making pilgrimage. Such was the tenacity
of his faith that even the subsequent estrangement of his beloved
mistress from the Cause she had spontaneously embraced failed to
becloud its radiance, or to lessen the intensity of the emotions
which the loving-kindness showered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá upon
him had excited in his breast.
The return of these God-intoxicated pilgrims, some to France, others
to the United States, was the signal for an outburst of systematic
and sustained activity, which, as it gathered momentum, and spread
its ramifications over Western Europe and the states and provinces of
the North American continent, grew to so great a scale that
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself resolved that, as soon as He should
be released from His prolonged confinement in ‘Akká, He would
undertake a personal mission to the West. Undeflected in its course
by the devastating crisis which the ambition of Dr. Khayru’lláh
had, upon his return from the Holy Land (December, 1899)
precipitated; undismayed by the agitation which he, working in
collaboration with the arch-breaker of the Covenant and his
messengers, had provoked; disdainful of the attacks launched by him
and his fellow-seceders, as well as by Christian ecclesiastics
increasingly jealous of the rising power and extending influence of
the Faith; nourished by a continual flow of pilgrims who transmitted
the verbal messages and special instructions of a vigilant Master;
invigorated by the effusions of His pen recorded in innumerable
Tablets; instructed by the successive messengers and teachers
dispatched at His behest for its guidance, edification and
consolidation, the community of the American believers arose to
initiate a series of enterprises which, blessed and stimulated a
decade later by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself, were to be but a
prelude to the unparalleled services destined to be rendered by its
members during the Formative Age of His Father’s Dispensation.
No sooner had one of these pilgrims, the afore-mentioned May Bolles,
returned to Paris than she succeeded, in compliance with
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s emphatic instructions, in establishing in
that city the first Bahá’í center to be formed on the European
continent. This center was, shortly after her arrival, reinforced by
the conversion of the illumined Thomas Breakwell, the first English
believer, immortalized by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s fervent eulogy
revealed in his memory; of Hippolyte Dreyfus, the first Frenchman to
embrace the Faith, who, through his writings, translations, travels
and other pioneer services, was able to consolidate, as the years
went by, the work which had been initiated in his country; and of
Laura Barney, whose imperishable service was to collect and transmit
to posterity in the form of a book, entitled “Some Answered
Questions,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s priceless explanations,
covering a wide variety of subjects, given to her in the course of an
extended pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Three years later, in 1902, May
Bolles, now married to a Canadian, transferred her residence to
Montreal, and succeeded in laying the foundations of the Cause in
that Dominion.
In London Mrs. Thornburgh-Cropper, as a consequence of the creative
influences released by that never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimage, was
able to initiate activities which, stimulated and expanded through
the efforts of the first English believers, and particularly of Ethel
J. Rosenberg, converted in 1899, enabled them to erect, in later
years, the structure of their administrative institutions in the
British Isles. In the North American continent, the defection and the
denunciatory publications of Dr. Khayru’lláh (encouraged as
he was by Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí and his son Shu‘á‘u’lláh,
whom he had despatched to America) tested to the utmost the loyalty
of the newly fledged community; but successive messengers despatched
by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (such as Ḥájí ‘Abdu’l-Karím-i-Ṭihrání,
Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥasan-i-Khurásání, Mírzá Asadu’lláh
and Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl) succeeded in rapidly dispelling the
doubts, and in deepening the understanding, of the believers, in
holding the community together, and in forming the nucleus of those
administrative institutions which, two decades later, were to be
formally inaugurated through the explicit provisions of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament. As far back as the
year 1899 a council board of seven officers, the forerunner of a
series of Assemblies which, ere the close of the first Bahá’í
Century, were to cover the North American Continent from coast to
coast, was established in the city of Kenosha. In 1902 a Bahá’í
Publishing Society, designed to propagate the literature of a
gradually expanding community, was formed in Chicago. A Bahá’í
Bulletin, for the purpose of disseminating the teachings of the Faith
was inaugurated in New York. The “Bahá’í News,” another
periodical, subsequently appeared in Chicago, and soon developed into
a magazine entitled “Star of the West.” The translation of some
of the most important writings of Bahá’u’lláh, such as the
“Hidden Words,” the “Kitáb-i-Íqán,” the “Tablets to the
Kings,” and the “Seven Valleys,” together with the Tablets of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as well as several treatises and pamphlets
written by Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl and others, was energetically
undertaken. A considerable correspondence with various centers
throughout the Orient was initiated, and grew steadily in scope and
importance. Brief histories of the Faith, books and pamphlets written
in its defence, articles for the press, accounts of travels and
pilgrimages, eulogies and poems, were likewise published and widely
disseminated.
Early development of the Faith in North America
Simultaneously, travellers and teachers, emerging triumphantly from
the storms of tests and trials which had threatened to engulf their
beloved Cause, arose, of their own accord, to reinforce and multiply
the strongholds of the Faith already established. Centers were opened
in the cities of Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Cleveland, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Rochester, Pittsburgh,
Seattle, St. Paul and in other places. Audacious pioneers, whether as
visitors or settlers, eager to spread the new born Evangel beyond the
confines of their native country, undertook journeys, and embarked on
enterprises which carried its light to the heart of Europe, to the
Far East, and as far as the islands of the Pacific. Mason Remey
voyaged to Russia and Persia, and later, with Howard Struven,
circled, for the first time in Bahá’í history, the globe,
visiting on his way the Hawaiian Islands, Japan, China, India and
Burma. Hooper Harris and Harlan Ober traveled, during no less than
seven months, in India and Burma, visiting Bombay, Poona, Lahore,
Calcutta, Rangoon and Mandalay. Alma Knobloch, following on the heels
of Dr. K. E. Fisher, hoisted the standard of the Faith in Germany,
and carried its light to Austria. Dr. Susan I. Moody, Sydney Sprague,
Lillian F. Kappes, Dr. Sarah Clock, and Elizabeth Stewart transferred
their residence to Ṭihrán for the purpose of furthering the
manifold interests of the Faith, in collaboration with the Bahá’ís
of that city. Sarah Farmer, who had already initiated in 1894, at
Green Acre, in the State of Maine, summer conferences and established
a center for the promotion of unity and fellowship between races and
religions, placed, after her pilgrimage to ‘Akká in 1900, the
facilities these conferences provided at the disposal of the
followers of the Faith which she had herself recently embraced.
And last but not least, inspired by the example set by their
fellow-disciples in ‘Ishqábád, who had already commenced
the construction of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of
the Bahá’í world, and afire with the desire to demonstrate, in a
tangible and befitting manner, the quality of their faith and
devotion, the Bahá’ís of Chicago, having petitioned ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
for permission to erect a House of Worship, and secured, in a Tablet
revealed in June 1903, His ready and enthusiastic approval, arose,
despite the smallness of their numbers and their limited resources,
to initiate an enterprise which must rank as the greatest single
contribution which the Bahá’ís of America, and indeed of the
West, have as yet made to the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh. The
subsequent encouragement given them by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and
the contributions raised by various Assemblies decided the members of
this Assembly to invite representatives of their fellow-believers in
various parts of the country to meet in Chicago for the initiation of
the stupendous undertaking they had conceived. On November 26, 1907,
the assembled representatives, convened for that purpose, appointed a
committee of nine to locate a suitable site for the proposed Temple.
By April 9, 1908, the sum of two thousand dollars had been paid for
the purchase of two building lots, situated near the shore of Lake
Michigan. In March 1909, a convention representative of various
Bahá’í centers was called, in pursuance of instructions received
from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The thirty-nine delegates, representing
thirty-six cities, who had assembled in Chicago, on the very day the
remains of the Báb were laid to rest by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in
the specially erected mausoleum on Mt. Carmel, established a
permanent national organization, known as the Bahá’í Temple
Unity, which was incorporated as a religious corporation, functioning
under the laws of the State of Illinois, and invested with full
authority to hold title to the property of the Temple and to provide
ways and means for its construction. At this same convention a
constitution was framed, the Executive Board of the Bahá’í Temple
Unity was elected, and was authorized by the delegates to complete
the purchase of the land recommended by the previous Convention.
Contributions for this historic enterprise, from India, Persia,
Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Russia, Egypt, Germany, France, England,
Canada, Mexico, the Hawaiian Islands, and even Mauritius, and from no
less than sixty American cities, amounted by 1910, two years previous
to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s arrival in America, to no less than
twenty thousand dollars, a remarkable testimony alike to the
solidarity of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh in both the East and
the West, and to the self-sacrificing efforts exerted by the American
believers who, as the work progressed, assumed a preponderating share
in providing the sum of over a million dollars required for the
erection of the structure of the Temple and its external
ornamentation.
The outstanding accomplishments of a valiant and sorely-tested
community, the first fruits of Bahá’u’lláh’s newly
established Covenant in the Western world, had laid a foundation
sufficiently imposing to invite the presence of the appointed Center
of that Covenant, Who had called that Community into being and
watched, with such infinite care and foresight, over its budding
destinies. Not until, however, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had emerged
from the severe crisis which had already for several years been
holding Him in its toils could He undertake His memorable voyage to
the shores of a continent where the rise and establishment of His
Father’s Faith had been signalized by such magnificent and enduring
achievements.
This second major crisis of His ministry, external in nature and
hardly less severe than the one precipitated by the rebellion of
Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, gravely imperiled His life, deprived Him,
for a number of years, of the relative freedom He had enjoyed,
plunged into anguish His family and the followers of the Faith in
East and West, and exposed as never before, the degradation and
infamy of His relentless adversaries. It originated two years after
the departure of the first American pilgrims from the Holy Land. It
persisted, with varying degrees of intensity, during more than seven
years, and was directly attributable to the incessant intrigues and
monstrous misrepresentations of the Arch-Breaker of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Covenant and his supporters.
Machinations of the Covenant-breakers
Embittered by his abject failure to create a schism on which he had
fondly pinned his hopes; stung by the conspicuous success which the
standard-bearers of the Covenant had, despite his machinations,
achieved in the North American continent; encouraged by the existence
of a régime that throve in an atmosphere of intrigue and suspicion,
and which was presided over by a cunning and cruel potentate;
determined to exploit to the full the opportunities for mischief
afforded him by the arrival of Western pilgrims at the
prison-fortress of ‘Akká, as well as by the commencement of the
construction of the Báb’s sepulcher on Mt. Carmel, Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí, seconded by his brother, Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh,
and aided by his brother-in-law, Mírzá Majdi’d-Dín, succeeded
through strenuous and persistent endeavors in exciting the suspicion
of the Turkish government and its officials, and in inducing them to
reimpose on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the confinement from which, in
the days of Bahá’u’lláh, He had so grievously suffered.
This very brother, Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí’s chief accomplice,
in a written confession signed, sealed and published by him, on the
occasion of his reconciliation with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, has
borne testimony to the wicked plots that had been devised. “What I
have heard from others,” wrote Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh, “I will
ignore. I will only recount what I have seen with my own eyes, and
heard from his (Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí) lips.” “It was
arranged by him (Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí),” he, then, proceeds
to relate, “to dispatch Mírzá Majdi’d-Dín with a gift and a
letter written in Persian to Náẓim Páshá, the Válí
(governor) of Damascus, and to seek his assistance.… As he (Mírzá
Majdi’d-Dín) himself informed me in Haifa he did all he could to
acquaint him (governor) fully with the construction work on Mt.
Carmel, with the comings and goings of the American believers, and
with the gatherings held in ‘Akká. The Páshá, in his
desire to know all the facts, was extremely kind to him, and assured
him of his aid. A few days after Mírzá Majdi’d-Dín’s return a
cipher telegram was received from the Sublime Porte, transmitting the
Sulṭán’s orders to incarcerate ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, myself
and the others.” “In those days,” he, furthermore, in that same
document, testifies, “a man who came to ‘Akká from Damascus
stated to outsiders that Náẓim Páshá had been the cause of
the incarceration of ‘Abbás Effendi. The strangest thing of all is
this that Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, after he had been incarcerated,
wrote a letter to Náẓim Páshá for the purpose of achieving
his own deliverance.… The Páshá, however, did not write
even a word in answer to either the first or the second letter.”
It was in 1901, on the fifth day of the month of Jamádíyu’l-Avval
1319 A.H. (August 20) that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, upon His return
from Bahjí where He had participated in the celebration of the
anniversary of the Báb’s Declaration, was informed, in the course
of an interview with the governor of ‘Akká, of Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd’s instructions ordering that the restrictions
which had been gradually relaxed should be reimposed, and that He and
His brothers should be strictly confined within the walls of that
city. The Sulṭán’s edict was at first rigidly enforced, the
freedom of the exiled community was severely curtailed, while
‘Abdu’l-Bahá had to submit, alone and unaided, to the
prolonged interrogation of judges and officials, who required His
presence for several consecutive days at government headquarters for
the purpose of their investigations. One of His first acts was to
intercede on behalf of His brothers, who had been peremptorily
summoned and informed by the governor of the orders of the sovereign,
an act which failed to soften their hostility or lessen their
malevolent activities. Subsequently, through His intervention with
the civil and military authorities, He succeeded in obtaining the
freedom of His followers who resided in ‘Akká, and in enabling
them to continue to earn, without interference, the means of
livelihood.
The Covenant-breakers were unappeased by the measures taken by the
authorities against One Who had so magnanimously intervened on their
behalf. Aided by the notorious Yaḥyá Bey, the chief of police, and
other officials, civil as well as military, who, in consequence of
their representations, had replaced those who had been friendly to
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and by secret agents who traveled back and
forth between ‘Akká and Constantinople, and who even kept a
vigilant watch over everything that went on in His household, they
arose to encompass His ruin. They lavished on officials gifts which
included possessions sacred to the memory of Bahá’u’lláh, and
shamelessly proffered to high and low alike bribes drawn, in some
instances, from the sale of properties associated with Him or
bestowed upon some of them by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Relaxing
nothing of their efforts they pursued relentlessly the course of
their nefarious activities, determined to leave no stone unturned
until they had either brought about His execution or ensured His
deportation to a place remote enough to enable them to wrest the
Cause from His grasp. The Válí of Damascus, the Muftí of Beirut,
members of the Protestant missions established in Syria and ‘Akká,
even the influential Shaykh Abu’l-Hudá, in
Constantinople, whom the Sulṭán held in as profound an esteem as
that in which Muḥammad Sháh had held his Grand Vizir, Ḥájí
Mírzá Áqásí, were, on various occasions, approached, appealed
to, and urged to lend their assistance for the prosecution of their
odious designs.
Through verbal messages, formal communications and by personal
interviews the Covenant-breakers impressed upon these notables the
necessity of immediate action, shrewdly adapting their arguments to
the particular interests and prejudices of those whose aid they
solicited. To some they represented ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as a
callous usurper Who had trampled upon their rights, robbed them of
their heritage, reduced them to poverty, made their friends in Persia
their enemies, accumulated for Himself a vast fortune, and acquired
no less than two-thirds of the land in Haifa. To others they declared
that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá contemplated making of ‘Akká and
Haifa a new Mecca and Medina. To still others they affirmed that
Bahá’u’lláh was no more than a retired dervish, who professed
and promoted the Faith of Islám, Whom ‘Abbás Effendi, His son,
had, for the purpose of self-glorification, exalted to the rank of
God-head, whilst claiming Himself to be the Son of God and the return
of Jesus Christ. They further accused Him of harboring designs
inimical to the interests of the state, of meditating a rebellion
against the Sulṭán, of having already hoisted the banner of Yá
Bahá’u’l-Abhá, the ensign of revolt, in distant villages in
Palestine and Syria, of having raised surreptitiously an army of
thirty thousand men, of being engaged in the construction of a
fortress and a vast ammunition depot on Mt. Carmel, of having secured
the moral and material support of a host of English and American
friends, amongst whom were officers of foreign powers, who were
arriving, in large numbers and in disguise, to pay Him their homage,
and of having already, in conjunction with them, drawn up His plans
for the subjugation of the neighboring provinces, for the expulsion
of the ruling authorities, and for the ultimate seizure of the power
wielded by the Sulṭán himself. Through misrepresentation and
bribery they succeeded in inducing certain people to affix their
signatures as witnesses to the documents which they had drawn up, and
which they despatched, through their agents, to the Sublime Porte.
Appointment of a Commission of Inquiry by Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd
Such grave accusations, embodied in numerous reports, could not fail
to perturb profoundly the mind of a despot already obsessed by the
fear of impending rebellion among his subjects. A commission was
accordingly appointed to inquire into the matter, and report the
result of its investigations. Each of the charges brought against
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, when summoned to the court, on several
occasions, He carefully and fearlessly refuted. He exposed the
absurdity of these accusations, acquainted the members of the
Commission, in support of His argument, with the provisions of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Testament, expressed His readiness to submit to
any sentence the court might decide to pass upon Him, and eloquently
affirmed that if they should chain Him, drag Him through the streets,
execrate and ridicule Him, stone and spit upon Him, suspend Him in
the public square, and riddle Him with bullets, He would regard it as
a signal honor, inasmuch as He would thereby be following in the
footsteps, and sharing the sufferings, of His beloved Leader, the
Báb.
Activities of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during His incarceration
The gravity of the situation confronting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; the
rumors that were being set afloat by a population that anticipated
the gravest developments; the hints and allusions to the dangers
threatening Him contained in newspapers published in Egypt and Syria;
the aggressive attitude which His enemies increasingly assumed; the
provocative behavior of some of the inhabitants of ‘Akká and Haifa
who had been emboldened by the predictions and fabrications of these
enemies regarding the fate awaiting a suspected community and its
Leader, led Him to reduce the number of pilgrims, and even to
suspend, for a time, their visits, and to issue special instructions
that His mail be handled through an agent in Egypt rather than in
Haifa; for a time He ordered that it should be held there pending
further advice from Him. He, moreover, directed the believers, as
well as His own secretaries, to collect and remove to a place of
safety all the Bahá’í writings in their possession, and, urging
them to transfer their residence to Egypt, went so far as to forbid
their gathering, as was their wont, in His house. Even His numerous
friends and admirers refrained, during the most turbulent days of
this period, from calling upon Him, for fear of being implicated and
of incurring the suspicion of the authorities. On certain days and
nights, when the outlook was at its darkest, the house in which He
was living, and which had for many years been a focus of activity,
was completely deserted. Spies, secretly and openly, kept watch
around it, observing His every movement and restricting the freedom
of His family.
The construction of the Báb’s sepulcher, whose foundation-stone
had been laid by Him on the site blessed and selected by Bahá’u’lláh,
He, however, refused to suspend, or even interrupt, for however brief
a period. Nor would He allow any obstacle, however formidable, to
interfere with the daily flow of Tablets which poured forth, with
prodigious rapidity and ever increasing volume, from His
indefatigable pen, in answer to the vast number of letters, reports,
inquiries, prayers, confessions of faith, apologies and eulogies
received from countless followers and admirers in both the East and
the West. Eye-witnesses have testified that, during that agitated and
perilous period of His life, they had known Him to pen, with His own
Hand, no less than ninety Tablets in a single day, and to pass many a
night, from dusk to dawn, alone in His bed-chamber engaged in a
correspondence which the pressure of His manifold responsibilities
had prevented Him from attending to in the day-time.
It was during these troublous times, the most dramatic period of His
ministry, when, in the hey-day of His life and in the full tide of
His power, He, with inexhaustible energy, marvelous serenity and
unshakable confidence, initiated and resistlessly prosecuted the
varied enterprises associated with that ministry. It was during these
times that the plan of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
of the Bahá’í world was conceived by Him, and its construction
undertaken by His followers in the city of ‘Ishqábád in
Turkistán. It was during these times, despite the disturbances that
agitated His native country, that instructions were issued by Him for
the restoration of the holy and historic House of the Báb in Shíráz.
It was during these times that the initial measures, chiefly through
His constant encouragement, were taken which paved the way for the
laying of the dedication stone, which He, in later years, placed with
His own hands when visiting the site of the Mother Temple of the West
on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was at this juncture that that
celebrated compilation of His table talks, published under the title
“Some Answered Questions,” was made, talks given during the brief
time He was able to spare, in the course of which certain fundamental
aspects of His Father’s Faith were elucidated, traditional and
rational proofs of its validity adduced, and a great variety of
subjects regarding the Christian Dispensation, the Prophets of God,
Biblical prophecies, the origin and condition of man and other
kindred themes authoritatively explained.
It was during the darkest hours of this period that, in a
communication addressed to the Báb’s cousin, the venerable Ḥájí
Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the chief builder of the Temple of
‘Ishqábád, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in stirring terms,
proclaimed the immeasurable greatness of the Revelation of
Bahá’u’lláh, sounded the warnings foreshadowing the turmoil
which its enemies, both far and near, would let loose upon the world,
and prophesied, in moving language, the ascendancy which the
torchbearers of the Covenant would ultimately achieve over them. It
was at an hour of grave suspense, during that same period, that He
penned His Will and Testament, that immortal Document wherein He
delineated the features of the Administrative Order which would arise
after His passing, and would herald the establishment of that World
Order, the advent of which the Báb had announced, and the laws and
principles of which Bahá’u’lláh had already formulated. It was
in the course of these tumultuous years that, through the
instrumentality of the heralds and champions of a firmly instituted
Covenant, He reared the embryonic institutions, administrative,
spiritual, and educational, of a steadily expanding Faith in Persia,
the cradle of that Faith, in the Great Republic of the West, the
cradle of its Administrative Order, in the Dominion of Canada, in
France, in England, in Germany, in Egypt, in ‘Iráq, in Russia, in
India, in Burma, in Japan, and even in the remote Pacific Islands. It
was during these stirring times that a tremendous impetus was lent by
Him to the translation, the publication and dissemination of Bahá’í
literature, whose scope now included a variety of books and
treatises, written in the Persian, the Arabic, the English, the
Turkish, the French, the German, the Russian and Burmese languages.
At His table, in those days, whenever there was a lull in the storm
raging about Him, there would gather pilgrims, friends and inquirers
from most of the afore-mentioned countries, representative of the
Christian, the Muslim, the Jewish, the Zoroastrian, the Hindu and
Buddhist Faiths. To the needy thronging His doors and filling the
courtyard of His house every Friday morning, in spite of the perils
that environed Him, He would distribute alms with His own hands, with
a regularity and generosity that won Him the title of “Father of
the Poor.” Nothing in those tempestuous days could shake His
confidence, nothing would be allowed to interfere with His
ministrations to the destitute, the orphan, the sick, and the
down-trodden, nothing could prevent Him from calling in person upon
those who were either incapacitated or ashamed to solicit His aid.
Adamant in His determination to follow the example of both the Báb
and Bahá’u’lláh, nothing would induce Him to flee from His
enemies, or escape from imprisonment, neither the advice tendered Him
by the leading members of the exiled community in ‘Akká, nor the
insistent pleas of the Spanish Consul — a kinsman of the agent of an
Italian steamship company — who, in his love for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
and his anxiety to avert the threatening danger, had gone so far as
to place at His disposal an Italian freighter, ready to provide Him a
safe passage to any foreign port He might name.
So imperturbable was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s equanimity that,
while rumors were being bruited about that He might be cast into the
sea, or exiled to Fízán in Tripolitania, or hanged on the gallows,
He, to the amazement of His friends and the amusement of His enemies,
was to be seen planting trees and vines in the garden of His house,
whose fruits when the storm had blown over, He would bid His faithful
gardener, Ismá‘íl Áqá, pluck and present to those same friends
and enemies on the occasion of their visits to Him.
Investigations and recall of the Commission
In the early part of the winter of 1907 another Commission of four
officers, headed by ‘Árif Bey, and invested with plenary powers,
was suddenly dispatched to ‘Akká by order of the Sulṭán. A few
days before its arrival ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had a dream, which He
recounted to the believers, in which He saw a ship cast anchor off
‘Akká, from which flew a few birds, resembling sticks of dynamite,
and which, circling about His head, as He stood in the midst of a
multitude of the frightened inhabitants of the city, returned without
exploding to the ship.
No sooner had the members of the Commission landed than they placed
under their direct and exclusive control both the Telegraph and
Postal services in ‘Akká; arbitrarily dismissed officials
suspected of being friendly to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, including the
governor of the city; established direct and secret contact with the
government in Constantinople; took up their residence in the home of
the neighbors and intimate associates of the Covenant-breakers; set
guards over the house of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to prevent any one
from seeing Him; and started the strange procedure of calling up as
witnesses the very people, among whom were Christians and Moslems,
orientals and westerners, who had previously signed the documents
forwarded to Constantinople, and which they had brought with them for
the purpose of their investigations.
The activities of the Covenant-breakers, and particularly of Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí, now jubilant and full of hope, rose in this hour
of extreme crisis, to the highest pitch. Visits, interviews and
entertainments multiplied, in an atmosphere of fervid expectation,
now that the victory was seen to be at hand. Not a few among the
lower elements of the population were led to believe that their
acquisition of the property which would be left behind by the
deported exiles was imminent. Insults and calumnies markedly
increased. Even some of the poor, so long and so bountifully succored
by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, forsook Him for fear of reprisals.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, while the members of the Commission were
carrying on their so-called investigations, and throughout their stay
of about one month in ‘Akká, consistently refused to meet or have
any dealings with any of them, in spite of the veiled threats and
warnings conveyed by them to Him through a messenger, an attitude
which greatly surprised them and served to inflame their animosity
and reinforce their determination to execute their evil designs.
Though the perils and tribulations which had encompassed Him were now
at their thickest, though the ship on which He was supposed to embark
with the members of the Commission was waiting in readiness, at times
in ‘Akká, at times in Haifa, and the wildest rumors were being
spread about Him, the serenity He had invariably maintained, ever
since His incarceration had been reimposed, remained unclouded, and
His confidence unshaken. “The meaning of the dream I dreamt,”
He, at that time, told the believers who still remained in ‘Akká,
“is now clear and evident. Please God this dynamite will not
explode.”
Meanwhile the members of the Commission had, on a certain Friday,
gone to Haifa and inspected the Báb’s sepulcher, the construction
of which had been proceeding without any interruption on Mt. Carmel.
Impressed by its solidity and dimensions, they had inquired of one of
the attendants as to the number of vaults that had been built beneath
that massive structure.
Shortly after the inspection had been made it was suddenly observed,
one day at about sunset, that the ship, which had been lying off
Haifa, had weighed anchor, and was heading towards ‘Akká. The news
spread rapidly among an excited population that the members of the
Commission had embarked upon it. It was anticipated that it would
stop long enough at ‘Akká to take ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on
board, and then proceed to its destination. Consternation and anguish
seized the members of His family when informed of the approach of the
ship. The few believers who were left wept with grief at their
impending separation from their Master. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá could
be seen, at that tragic hour, pacing, alone and silent, the courtyard
of His house.
As dusk fell, however, it was suddenly noticed that the lights of the
ship had swung round, and the vessel had changed her course. It now
became evident that she was sailing direct for Constantinople. The
intelligence was instantly communicated to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
Who, in the gathering darkness, was still pacing His courtyard. Some
of the believers who had posted themselves at different points to
watch the progress of the ship hurried to confirm the joyful tidings.
One of the direst perils that had ever threatened ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
precious life was, on that historic day, suddenly, providentially and
definitely averted.
Soon after the precipitate and wholly unexpected sailing of that ship
news was received that a bomb had exploded in the path of the Sulṭán
while he was returning to his palace from the mosque where he had
been offering his Friday prayers.
Outbreak of the Young Turk Revolution and liberation of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
A few days after this attempt on his life the Commission submitted
its report to him; but he and his government were too preoccupied to
consider the matter. The case was laid aside, and when, some months
later, it was again brought forward it was abruptly closed forever by
an event which, once and for all, placed the Prisoner of ‘Akká
beyond the power of His royal enemy. The “Young Turk” Revolution,
breaking out swiftly and decisively in 1908, forced a reluctant
despot to promulgate the constitution which he had suspended, and to
release all religious and political prisoners held under the old
régime. Even then a telegram had to be sent to Constantinople to
inquire specifically whether ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was included in
the category of these prisoners, to which an affirmative reply was
promptly received.
Within a few months, in 1909, the Young Turks obtained from the
Shaykhu’l-Islám the condemnation of the Sulṭán
himself who, as a result of further attempts to overthrow the
constitution, was finally and ignominiously deposed, deported and
made a prisoner of state. On one single day of that same year there
were executed no less than thirty-one leading ministers, páshás
and officials, among whom were numbered notorious enemies of the
Faith. Tripolitania itself, the scene of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
intended exile was subsequently wrested from the Turks by Italy. Thus
ended the reign of the “Great Assassin,” “the most mean,
cunning, untrustworthy and cruel intriguer of the long dynasty of
‘Uthmán,” a reign “more disastrous in its immediate
losses of territory and in the certainty of others to follow, and
more conspicuous for the deterioration of the condition of his
subjects, than that of any other of his twenty-three degenerate
predecessors since the death of Sulaymán the Magnificent.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s unexpected and dramatic release from His
forty-year confinement dealt a blow to the ambitions cherished by the
Covenant-breakers as devastating as that which, a decade before, had
shattered their hopes of undermining His authority and of ousting Him
from His God-given position. Now, on the very morrow of His
triumphant liberation a third blow befell them as stunning as those
which preceded it and hardly less spectacular than they. Within a few
months of the historic decree which set Him free, in the very year
that witnessed the downfall of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, that
same power from on high which had enabled ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to
preserve inviolate the rights divinely conferred on Him, to establish
His Father’s Faith in the North American continent, and to triumph
over His royal oppressor, enabled Him to achieve one of the most
signal acts of His ministry: the removal of the Báb’s remains from
their place of concealment in Ṭihrán to Mt. Carmel. He Himself
testified, on more than one occasion, that the safe transfer of these
remains, the construction of a befitting mausoleum to receive them,
and their final interment with His own hands in their permanent
resting-place constituted one of the three principal objectives
which, ever since the inception of His mission, He had conceived it
His paramount duty to achieve. This act indeed deserves to rank as
one of the outstanding events in the first Bahá’í century.
Concealment of the remains and their final transportation to the Holy Land
As observed in a previous chapter the mangled bodies of the Báb and
His fellow-martyr, Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, were removed, in the
middle of the second night following their execution, through the
pious intervention of Ḥájí Sulaymán Khán, from the edge
of the moat where they had been cast to a silk factory owned by one
of the believers of Mílán, and were laid the next day in a wooden
casket, and thence carried to a place of safety. Subsequently,
according to Bahá’u’lláh’s instructions, they were
transported to Ṭihrán and placed in the shrine of Imám-Zádih
Ḥasan. They were later removed to the residence of Ḥájí
Sulaymán Khán himself in the Sar-Chashmih
quarter of the city, and from his house were taken to the shrine of
Imám-Zádih Ma‘ṣúm, where they remained concealed until the year
1284 A.H. (1867–1868), when a Tablet, revealed by Bahá’u’lláh
in Adrianople, directed Mullá ‘Alí-Akbar-i-Shahmírzádí
and Jamál-i-Burújirdí to transfer them without delay to some other
spot, an instruction which, in view of the subsequent reconstruction
of that shrine, proved to have been providential.
Unable to find a suitable place in the suburb of Sháh
‘Abdu’l-‘Aẓím, Mullá ‘Alí-Akbar and his companion
continued their search until, on the road leading to Chashmih-‘Alí,
they came upon the abandoned and dilapidated Masjid-i-Máshá’u’lláh,
where they deposited, within one of its walls, after dark, their
precious burden, having first re-wrapt the remains in a silken shroud
brought by them for that purpose. Finding the next day to their
consternation that the hiding-place had been discovered, they
clandestinely carried the casket through the gate of the capital
direct to the house of Mírzá Ḥasan-i-Vazír, a believer and
son-in-law of Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid ‘Alíy-i-Tafríshí,
the Majdu’l-Ashraf, where it remained for no less than
fourteen months. The long-guarded secret of its whereabouts becoming
known to the believers, they began to visit the house in such numbers
that a communication had to be addressed by Mullá ‘Alí-Akbar to
Bahá’u’lláh, begging for guidance in the matter. Ḥájí Sháh
Muḥammad-i-Manshádí, surnamed Amínu’l-Bayán, was
accordingly commissioned to receive the Trust from him, and bidden to
exercise the utmost secrecy as to its disposal.
Assisted by another believer, Ḥájí Sháh Muḥammad buried
the casket beneath the floor of the inner sanctuary of the shrine of
Imám-Zádih Zayd, where it lay undetected until Mírzá
Asadu’lláh-i-Iṣfahání was informed of its exact location
through a chart forwarded to him by Bahá’u’lláh. Instructed by
Bahá’u’lláh to conceal it elsewhere, he first removed the
remains to his own house in Ṭihrán, after which they were
deposited in several other localities such as the house of
Ḥusayn-‘Alíy-i-Iṣfahání and that of Muḥammad-Karím-i-‘Aṭṭár,
where they remained hidden until the year 1316 (1899) A.H., when, in
pursuance of directions issued by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, this same
Mírzá Asadu’lláh, together with a number of other believers,
transported them by way of Iṣfahán, Kirmánsháh, Baghdád
and Damascus, to Beirut and thence by sea to ‘Akká, arriving at
their destination on the 19th of the month of Ramaḍán 1316 A.H.
(January 31, 1899), fifty lunar years after the Báb’s execution in
Tabríz.
In the same year that this precious Trust reached the shores of the
Holy Land and was delivered into the hands of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
He, accompanied by Dr. Ibráhím Khayru’lláh, whom He had
already honored with the titles of “Bahá’s Peter,”
“The
Second Columbus”
and “Conqueror of America,”
drove
to the recently purchased site which had been blessed and selected by
Bahá’u’lláh on Mt. Carmel, and there laid, with His own hands,
the foundation-stone of the edifice, the construction of which He, a
few months later, was to commence. About that same time, the marble
sarcophagus, designed to receive the body of the Báb, an offering of
love from the Bahá’ís of Rangoon, had, at ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
suggestion, been completed and shipped to Haifa.
No need to dwell on the manifold problems and preoccupations which,
for almost a decade, continued to beset ‘Abdu’l-Bahá until
the victorious hour when He was able to bring to a final consummation
the historic task entrusted to Him by His Father. The risks and
perils with which Bahá’u’lláh and later His Son had been
confronted in their efforts to insure, during half a century, the
protection of those remains were but a prelude to the grave dangers
which, at a later period, the Center of the Covenant Himself had to
face in the course of the construction of the edifice designed to
receive them, and indeed until the hour of His final release from His
incarceration.
The long-drawn out negotiations with the shrewd and calculating owner
of the building-site of the holy Edifice, who, under the influence of
the Covenant-breakers, refused for a long time to sell; the
exorbitant price at first demanded for the opening of a road leading
to that site and indispensable to the work of construction; the
interminable objections raised by officials, high and low, whose
easily aroused suspicions had to be allayed by repeated explanations
and assurances given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself; the
dangerous situation created by the monstrous accusations brought by
Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí and his associates regarding the character
and purpose of that building; the delays and complications caused by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s prolonged and enforced absence from
Haifa, and His consequent inability to supervise in person the vast
undertaking He had initiated — all these were among the principal
obstacles which He, at so critical a period in His ministry, had to
face and surmount ere He could execute in its entirety the Plan, the
outline of which Bahá’u’lláh had communicated to Him on the
occasion of one of His visits to Mt. Carmel.
“Every stone of that building, every stone of the road leading
to it,”
He, many a time was heard to remark, “I have with
infinite tears and at tremendous cost, raised and placed in
position.”
“One night,”
He, according to an
eye-witness, once observed, “I was so hemmed in by My anxieties
that I had no other recourse than to recite and repeat over and over
again a prayer of the Báb which I had in My possession, the recital
of which greatly calmed Me. The next morning the owner of the plot
himself came to Me, apologized and begged Me to purchase his
property.”
Interment of the remains by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Finally, in the very year His royal adversary lost his throne, and at
the time of the opening of the first American Bahá’í Convention,
convened in Chicago for the purpose of creating a permanent national
organization for the construction of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár,
‘Abdu’l-Bahá brought His undertaking to a successful
conclusion, in spite of the incessant machinations of enemies both
within and without. On the 28th of the month of Ṣafar 1327 A.H.,
the day of the first Naw-Rúz (1909), which He celebrated after His
release from His confinement, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had the marble
sarcophagus transported with great labor to the vault prepared for
it, and in the evening, by the light of a single lamp, He laid within
it, with His own hands — in the presence of believers from the East
and from the West and in circumstances at once solemn and moving — the
wooden casket containing the sacred remains of the Báb and His
companion.
When all was finished, and the earthly remains of the Martyr-Prophet
of Shíráz were, at long last, safely deposited for their
everlasting rest in the bosom of God’s holy mountain, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
Who had cast aside His turban, removed His shoes and thrown off His
cloak, bent low over the still open sarcophagus, His silver hair
waving about His head and His face transfigured and luminous, rested
His forehead on the border of the wooden casket, and, sobbing aloud,
wept with such a weeping that all those who were present wept with
Him. That night He could not sleep, so overwhelmed was He with
emotion.
“The most joyful tidings is this,”
He wrote later in a
Tablet announcing to His followers the news of this glorious victory,
“that the holy, the luminous body of the Báb … after having
for sixty years been transferred from place to place, by reason of
the ascendancy of the enemy, and from fear of the malevolent, and
having known neither rest nor tranquility has, through the mercy of
the Abhá Beauty, been ceremoniously deposited, on the day of
Naw-Rúz, within the sacred casket, in the exalted Shrine on Mt.
Carmel … By a strange coincidence, on that same day of Naw-Rúz, a
cablegram was received from Chicago, announcing that the believers in
each of the American centers had elected a delegate and sent to that
city … and definitely decided on the site and construction of the
Mashriqu’l-Adhkár.”
With the transference of the remains of the Báb — Whose advent marks
the return of the Prophet Elijah — to Mt. Carmel, and their interment
in that holy mountain, not far from the cave of that Prophet Himself,
the Plan so gloriously envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh, in the evening
of His life, had been at last executed, and the arduous labors
associated with the early and tumultuous years of the ministry of the
appointed Center of His Covenant crowned with immortal success. A
focal center of Divine illumination and power, the very dust of which
‘Abdu’l-Bahá averred had inspired Him, yielding in
sacredness to no other shrine throughout the Bahá’í world except
the Sepulcher of the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation Himself, had
been permanently established on that mountain, regarded from time
immemorial as sacred. A structure, at once massive, simple and
imposing; nestling in the heart of Carmel, the “Vineyard of God”;
flanked by the Cave of Elijah on the west, and by the hills of
Galilee on the east; backed by the plain of Sharon, and facing the
silver-city of ‘Akká, and beyond it the Most Holy Tomb, the Heart
and Qiblih of the Bahá’í world; overshadowing the colony of
German Templars who, in anticipation of the “coming of the Lord,”
had forsaken their homes and foregathered at the foot of that
mountain, in the very year of Bahá’u’lláh’s Declaration in
Baghdád (1863), the mausoleum of the Báb had now, with
heroic effort and in impregnable strength been established as “the
Spot round which the Concourse on high circle in adoration.”
Events have already demonstrated through the extension of the Edifice
itself, through the embellishment of its surroundings, through the
acquisition of extensive endowments in its neighborhood, and through
its proximity to the resting-places of the wife, the son and daughter
of Bahá’u’lláh Himself, that it was destined to acquire with
the passing of the years a measure of fame and glory commensurate
with the high purpose that had prompted its founding. Nor will it, as
the years go by, and the institutions revolving around the World
Administrative Center of the future Bahá’í Commonwealth are
gradually established, cease to manifest the latent potentialities
with which that same immutable purpose has endowed it. Resistlessly
will this Divine institution flourish and expand, however fierce the
animosity which its future enemies may evince, until the full measure
of its splendor will have been disclosed before the eyes of all
mankind.
“Haste thee, O Carmel!”
Bahá’u’lláh, significantly
addressing that holy mountain, has written, “for lo, the light
of the Countenance of God … hath been lifted upon thee … Rejoice,
for God hath, in this Day, established upon thee His throne, hath
made thee the dawning-place of His signs and the dayspring of the
evidences of His Revelation. Well is it with him that circleth around
thee, that proclaimeth the revelation of thy glory, and recounteth
that which the bounty of the Lord thy God hath showered upon thee.”
“Call out to Zion, O Carmel!”
He, furthermore, has
revealed in that same Tablet, “and announce the joyful tidings:
He that was hidden from mortal eyes is come! His all-conquering
sovereignty is manifest; His all-encompassing splendor is revealed.
Beware lest thou hesitate or halt. Hasten forth and circumambulate
the City of God that hath descended from heaven, the celestial Kaaba
round which have circled in adoration the favored of God, the pure in
heart, and the company of the most exalted angels.”
The establishment of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the Western
Hemisphere — the most outstanding achievement that will forever be
associated with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry — had, as
observed in the preceding pages, set in motion such tremendous
forces, and been productive of such far-reaching results, as to
warrant the active and personal participation of the Center of the
Covenant Himself in those epoch-making activities which His Western
disciples had, through the propelling power of that Covenant, boldly
initiated and were vigorously prosecuting.
The crisis which the blindness and perversity of the
Covenant-breakers had precipitated, and which, for several years, had
so tragically interfered with the execution of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
purpose, was now providentially resolved. An unsurmountable barrier
had been suddenly lifted from His path, His fetters were unlocked,
and God’s avenging wrath had taken the chains from His neck and
placed them upon that of ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, His royal adversary
and the dupe of His most implacable enemy. The sacred remains of the
Báb, entrusted to His hands by His departed Father, had, moreover,
with immense difficulty been transferred from their hiding-place in
far-off Ṭihrán to the Holy Land, and deposited ceremoniously and
reverently by Him in the bosom of Mt. Carmel.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá was at this time broken in health. He
suffered from several maladies brought on by the strains and stresses
of a tragic life spent almost wholly in exile and imprisonment. He
was on the threshold of three-score years and ten. Yet as soon as He
was released from His forty-year long captivity, as soon as He had
laid the Báb’s body in a safe and permanent resting-place, and His
mind was free of grievous anxieties connected with the execution of
that priceless Trust, He arose with sublime courage, confidence and
resolution to consecrate what little strength remained to Him, in the
evening of His life, to a service of such heroic proportions that no
parallel to it is to be found in the annals of the first Bahá’í
century.
His visits to Egypt
Indeed His three years of travel, first to Egypt, then to Europe and
later to America, mark, if we would correctly appraise their historic
importance, a turning point of the utmost significance in the history
of the century. For the first time since the inception of the Faith,
sixty-six years previously, its Head and supreme Representative burst
asunder the shackles which had throughout the ministries of both the
Báb and Bahá’u’lláh so grievously fettered its freedom. Though
repressive measures still continued to circumscribe the activities of
the vast majority of its adherents in the land of its birth, its
recognized Leader was now vouchsafed a freedom of action which, with
the exception of a brief interval in the course of the War of
1914–18, He was to continue to enjoy to the end of His life, and
which has never since been withdrawn from its institutions at its
world center.
So momentous a change in the fortunes of the Faith was the signal for
such an outburst of activity on His part as to dumbfound His
followers in East and West with admiration and wonder, and exercise
an imperishable influence on the course of its future history. He
Who, in His own words, had entered prison as a youth and left it an
old man, Who never in His life had faced a public audience, had
attended no school, had never moved in Western circles, and was
unfamiliar with Western customs and language, had arisen not only to
proclaim from pulpit and platform, in some of the chief capitals of
Europe and in the leading cities of the North American continent, the
distinctive verities enshrined in His Father’s Faith, but to
demonstrate as well the Divine origin of the Prophets gone before
Him, and to disclose the nature of the tie binding them to that
Faith.
His journeys to Europe
Inflexibly resolved to undertake this arduous voyage, at whatever
cost to His strength, at whatever risk to His life, He, quietly and
without any previous warning, on a September afternoon, of the year
1910, the year following that which witnessed the downfall of Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd and the formal entombment of the Báb’s
remains on Mt. Carmel, sailed for Egypt, sojourned for about a month
in Port Said, and from thence embarked with the intention of
proceeding to Europe, only to discover that the condition of His
health necessitated His landing again at Alexandria and postponing
His voyage. Fixing His residence in Ramleh, a suburb of Alexandria,
and later visiting Zaytún and Cairo, He, on August 11 of the ensuing
year, sailed with a party of four, on the S.S. Corsica, for
Marseilles, and proceeded, after a brief stop at Thonon-les-Bains, to
London, where He arrived on September 4, 1911. After a visit of about
a month, He went to Paris, where He stayed for a period of nine
weeks, returning to Egypt in December, 1911. Again taking up His
residence in Ramleh, where He passed the winter, He embarked, on His
second journey to the West, on the steamship Cedric, on March 25,
1912, sailing via Naples direct to New York where He arrived on April
11. After a prolonged tour of eight months’ duration, which carried
Him from coast to coast, and in the course of which He visited
Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Montclair, Boston,
Worcester, Brooklyn, Fanwood, Milford, Philadelphia, West Englewood,
Jersey City, Cambridge, Medford, Morristown, Dublin, Green Acre,
Montreal, Malden, Buffalo, Kenosha, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Omaha,
Lincoln, Denver, Glenwood Springs, Salt Lake City, San Francisco,
Oakland, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Sacramento,
Cincinnati, and Baltimore, He sailed, on the S.S. Celtic, on December
5, from New York for Liverpool; and landing there He proceeded by
train to London. Later He visited Oxford, Edinburgh and Bristol, and
thence returning to London, left for Paris on January 21, 1913. On
March 30 He traveled to Stuttgart, and from there proceeded, on April
9, to Budapest, visited Vienna nine days later, returned to Stuttgart
on April 25, and to Paris on May first, where He remained until June
12, sailing the following day, on the S.S. Himalaya from Marseilles
bound for Egypt, arriving in Port Said four days later, where after
short visits to Ismá‘ílíyyih and Abúqír, and a prolonged stay
in Ramleh, He returned to Haifa, concluding His historic journeys on
December 5, 1913.
It was in the course of these epoch-making journeys and before large
and representative audiences, at times exceeding a thousand people,
that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá expounded, with brilliant simplicity,
with persuasiveness and force, and for the first time in His
ministry, those basic and distinguishing principles of His Father’s
Faith, which together with the laws and ordinances revealed in the
Kitáb-i-Aqdas constitute the bed-rock of God’s latest Revelation
to mankind. The independent search after truth, unfettered by
superstition or tradition; the oneness of the entire human race, the
pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the basic
unity of all religions; the condemnation of all forms of prejudice,
whether religious, racial, class or national; the harmony which must
exist between religion and science; the equality of men and women,
the two wings on which the bird of human kind is able to soar; the
introduction of compulsory education; the adoption of a universal
auxiliary language; the abolition of the extremes of wealth and
poverty; the institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of
disputes between nations; the exaltation of work, performed in the
spirit of service, to the rank of worship; the glorification of
justice as the ruling principle in human society, and of religion as
a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations; and the
establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme goal
of all mankind — these stand out as the essential elements of that
Divine polity which He proclaimed to leaders of public thought as
well as to the masses at large in the course of these missionary
journeys. The exposition of these vitalizing truths of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh, which He characterized as the “spirit of the
age,”
He supplemented with grave and reiterated warnings of an
impending conflagration which, if the statesmen of the world should
fail to avert, would set ablaze the entire continent of Europe. He,
moreover, predicted, in the course of these travels, the radical
changes which would take place in that continent, foreshadowed the
movement of the decentralization of political power which would
inevitably be set in motion, alluded to the troubles that would
overtake Turkey, anticipated the persecution of the Jews on the
European continent, and categorically asserted that the “banner
of the unity of mankind would be hoisted, that the tabernacle of
universal peace would be raised and the world become another world.”
During these travels ‘Abdu’l-Bahá displayed a vitality, a
courage, a single-mindedness, a consecration to the task He had set
Himself to achieve that excited the wonder and admiration of those
who had the privilege of observing at close hand His daily acts.
Indifferent to the sights and curiosities which habitually invite the
attention of travelers and which the members of His entourage often
wished Him to visit; careless alike of His comfort and His health;
expending every ounce of His energy day after day from dawn till late
at night; consistently refusing any gifts or contributions towards
the expenses of His travels; unfailing in His solicitude for the
sick, the sorrowful and the down-trodden; uncompromising in His
championship of the underprivileged races and classes; bountiful as
the rain in His generosity to the poor; contemptuous of the attacks
launched against Him by vigilant and fanatical exponents of orthodoxy
and sectarianism; marvelous in His frankness while demonstrating,
from platform and pulpit, the prophetic Mission of Jesus Christ to
the Jews, of the Divine origin of Islám in churches and synagogues,
or the truth of Divine Revelation and the necessity of religion to
materialists, atheists or agnostics; unequivocal in His glorification
of Bahá’u’lláh at all times and within the sanctuaries of
divers sects and denominations; adamant in His refusal, on several
occasions, to curry the favor of people of title and wealth both in
England and in the United States; and last but not least incomparable
in the spontaneity, the genuineness and warmth of His sympathy and
loving-kindness shown to friend and stranger alike, believer and
unbeliever, rich and poor, high and low, whom He met, either
intimately or casually, whether on board ship, or whilst pacing the
streets, in parks or public squares, at receptions or banquets, in
slums or mansions, in the gatherings of His followers or the
assemblage of the learned, He, the incarnation of every Bahá’í
virtue and the embodiment of every Bahá’í ideal, continued for
three crowded years to trumpet to a world sunk in materialism and
already in the shadow of war, the healing, the God-given truths
enshrined in His Father’s Revelation.
In the course of His several visits to Egypt He had more than one
interview with the Khedive, ‘Abbás Ḥilmí Páshá II, was
introduced to Lord Kitchener, met the Muftí, Shaykh
Muḥammad Bakhít, as well as the Khedive’s Imám, Shaykh
Muḥammad Ráshid, and associated with several ‘ulamás,
páshás, Persian notables, members of the Turkish Parliament,
editors of leading newspapers in Cairo and Alexandria, and other
leaders and representatives of well-known institutions, both
religious and secular.
Whilst He sojourned in England the house placed at His disposal in
Cadogan Gardens became a veritable mecca to all sorts and conditions
of men, thronging to visit the Prisoner of ‘Akká Who had chosen
their great city as the first scene of His labors in the West. “O,
these pilgrims, these guests, these visitors!” thus bears witness
His devoted hostess during the time He spent in London, “Remembering
those days, our ears are filled with the sound of their footsteps — as
they came from every country in the world. Every day, all day long, a
constant stream, an interminable procession! Ministers and
missionaries, oriental scholars and occult students, practical men of
affairs and mystics, Anglicans, Catholics, and Non-conformists,
Theosophists and Hindus, Christian Scientists and doctors of
medicine, Muslims, Buddhists and Zoroastrians. There also called:
politicians, Salvation Army soldiers, and other workers for human
good, women suffragists, journalists, writers, poets and healers,
dressmakers and great ladies, artists and artisans, poor workless
people and prosperous merchants, members of the dramatic and musical
world, these all came; and none were too lowly, nor too great, to
receive the sympathetic consideration of this holy Messenger, Who was
ever giving His life for others’ good.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s first public appearance before a western
audience significantly enough took place in a Christian house of
worship, when, on September 10, 1911, He addressed an overflowing
congregation from the pulpit of the City Temple. Introduced by the
Pastor, the Reverend R. J. Campbell, He, in simple and moving
language, and with vibrant voice, proclaimed the unity of God,
affirmed the fundamental oneness of religion, and announced that the
hour of the unity of the sons of men, of all races, religions and
classes had struck. On another occasion, on September 17, at the
request of the Venerable Archdeacon Wilberforce, He addressed the
congregation of St. John the Divine, at Westminster, after evening
service, choosing as His theme the transcendental greatness of the
Godhead, as affirmed and elucidated by Bahá’u’lláh in the
Kitáb-i-Íqán. “The Archdeacon,” wrote a contemporary of that
event, “had the Bishop’s chair placed for his Guest on the
chancel steps, and, standing beside Him, read the translation of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s address himself. The congregation was
profoundly moved, and, following the Archdeacon’s example, knelt to
receive the blessing of the Servant of God — Who stood with extended
arms — His wonderful voice rising and falling in the silence with the
power of His invocation.”
At the invitation of the Lord Mayor of London He breakfasted with him
at the Mansion House; addressed the Theosophical Society at their
headquarters, at the express request of their President, and also a
Meeting of the Higher Thought center in London; was invited by a
deputation from the Bramo-Somaj Society to deliver a lecture under
their auspices; visited and delivered an address on world unity at
the Mosque at Woking, at the invitation of the Muslim Community of
Great Britain, and was entertained by Persian princes, noblemen,
ex-ministers and members of the Persian Legation in London. He stayed
as a guest in Dr. T. K. Cheyne’s home in Oxford, and He delivered
an address to “a large and deeply interested audience,” highly
academic in character, gathered at Manchester College in that city,
and presided over by Dr. Estlin Carpenter. He also spoke from the
pulpit of a Congregational Church in the East End of London, in
response to the request of its Pastor; addressed gatherings in Caxton
Hall and Westminster Hall, the latter under the chairmanship of Sir
Thomas Barclay, and witnessed a performance of “Eager Heart,” a
Christmas mystery play at the Church House, Westminster, the first
dramatic performance He had ever beheld, and which in its graphic
depiction of the life and sufferings of Jesus Christ moved Him to
tears. In the Hall of the Passmore Edwards’ Settlement, in
Tavistock Place, he spoke to an audience of about four hundred and
sixty representative people, presided over by Prof. Michael Sadler,
called on a number of working women of that Settlement, who were on
holiday at Vanners’, in Byfleet, some twenty miles out of London,
and paid a second visit there, meeting on that occasion people of
every condition who had specially gathered to see Him, among whom
were “the clergy of several denominations, a headmaster of a boys’
public school, a member of Parliament, a doctor, a famous political
writer, the vice-chancellor of a university, several journalists, a
well-known poet, and a magistrate from London.” “He will long be
remembered,” wrote a chronicler of His visit to England, describing
that occasion, “as He sat in the bow window in the afternoon
sunshine, His arm round a very ragged but very happy little boy who
had come to ask ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for sixpence for his money
box and for his invalid mother, whilst round Him in the room were
gathered men and women discussing Education, Socialism, the first
Reform Bill, and the relation of submarines and wireless telegraphy
to the new era on which man is entering.”
Among those who called on Him during the memorable days He spent in
England and Scotland were the Reverend Archdeacon Wilberforce, the
Reverend R. J. Campbell, the Reverend Rhondda Williams, the Reverend
Roland Corbet, Lord Lamington, Sir Richard and Lady Stapley, Sir
Michael Sadler, the Jalálu’d-Dawlih, son of the Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán,
Sir Ameer Ali, the late Maharaja of Jalawar, who paid Him many
visits and gave an elaborate dinner and reception in His honor, the
Maharaja of Rajputana, the Ranee of Sarawak, Princess Karadja,
Baroness Barnekow, Lady Wemyss and her sister, Lady Glenconner, Lady
Agnew, Miss Constance Maud, Prof. E. G. Browne, Prof. Patrick Geddes,
Mr. Albert Dawson, editor of the Christian Commonwealth, Mr. David
Graham Pole, Mrs. Annie Besant, Mrs. Pankhurst, and Mr. Stead, who
had long and earnest conversations with Him. “Very numerous,” His
hostess, describing the impression produced on those who were
accorded by Him the privilege of a private audience, has written,
“were these applicants for so unique an experience, how unique only
those knew when in the presence of the Master, and we could partly
divine, as we saw the look on their faces as they emerged — a look as
though blended of awe, of marveling, and of a certain calm joy.
Sometimes we were conscious of reluctance in them to come forth into
the outer world, as though they would hold fast to their beatitude,
lest the return of things of earth should wrest it from them.” “A
profound impression,” the aforementioned chronicler has recorded,
summing up the results produced by that memorable visit, “remained
in the minds and memories of all sorts and conditions of men and
women.… Very greatly was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sojourn in
London appreciated; very greatly His departure regretted. He left
behind Him many, many friends. His love had kindled love. His heart
had opened to the West, and the Western heart had closed around this
patriarchal presence from the East. His words had in them something
that appealed not only to their immediate hearers, but to men and
women generally.”
His visits to Paris, where for a time He occupied an apartment in the
Avenue de Camoens, were marked by a warmth of welcome no less
remarkable than the reception accorded Him by His friends and
followers in London. “During the Paris visit,” that same devoted
English hostess, Lady Blomfield, who had followed Him to that city,
has testified, “as it had been in London, daily happenings took on
the atmosphere of spiritual events.… Every morning, according to
His custom, the Master expounded the principles of the teaching of
Bahá’u’lláh to those who gathered round Him, the learned and
the unlearned, eager and respectful. They were of all nationalities
and creeds, from the East and from the West, including Theosophists,
agnostics, materialists, spiritualists, Christian Scientists, social
reformers, Hindus, Ṣúfís, Muslims, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and many
others.” And again: “Interview followed interview. Church
dignitaries of various branches of the Christian Tree came, some
earnestly desirous of finding new aspects of the Truth.… Others
there were who stopped their ears, lest they should hear and
understand.”
Persian princes, noblemen and ex-ministers, among them the
Ẓillu’s-Sulṭán, the Persian Minister, the Turkish Ambassador
in Paris, Rashíd Páshá, an ex-válí of Beirut,
Turkish páshás and ex-ministers, and Viscount Arakawa,
Japanese Ambassador to the Court of Spain, were among those who had
the privilege of attaining His presence. Gatherings of Esperantists
and Theosophists, students of the Faculty of Theology and large
audiences at l’Alliance Spiritualiste were addressed by Him; at a
Mission Hall, in a very poor quarter of the city, He addressed a
congregation at the invitation of the Pastor, whilst in numerous
meetings of His followers those already familiar with His teachings
were privileged to hear from His lips detailed and frequent
expositions of certain aspects of His Father’s Faith.
In Stuttgart, where He made a brief but never-to-be-forgotten stay,
and to which He traveled in spite of ill-health in order to establish
personal contact with the members of the community of His
enthusiastic and dearly beloved German friends, He, apart from
attending the gatherings of His devoted followers, bestowed His
abundant blessings on the members of the Youth group, gathered at
Esslingen, and addressed, at the invitation of Professor Christale,
President of the Esperantists of Europe, a large meeting of
Esperantists at their club. He, moreover, visited Bad Mergentheim, in
Württemberg, where a few years later (1915) a monument was erected
in memory of His visit by one of His grateful disciples. “The
humility, love and devotion of the German believers,” wrote an
eyewitness, “rejoiced the heart of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and
they received His blessings and His words of encouraging counsel in
complete submissiveness.… Friends came from far and near to see the
Master. There was a constant flow of visitors at the Hotel Marquart.
There ‘Abdu’l-Bahá received them with such love and
graciousness that they became radiant with joy and happiness.”
In Vienna, where He stayed a few days, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
addressed a gathering of Theosophists in that city, whilst in
Budapest He granted an interview to the President of the University,
met on a number of occasions the famous Orientalist Prof. Arminius
Vambery, addressed the Theosophical Society, and was visited by the
President of the Turanian, and representatives of the Turkish
Societies, army officers, several members of Parliament, and a
deputation of Young Turks, led by Prof. Julius Germanus, who accorded
Him a hearty welcome to the city. “During this time,” is the
written testimony of Dr. Rusztem Vambery, “His (‘Abdu’l-Bahá)
room in the Dunapalota Hotel became a veritable mecca for all those
whom the mysticism of the East and the wisdom of its Master attracted
into its magic circle. Among His visitors were Count Albert Apponyi,
Prelate Alexander Giesswein, Professor Ignaz Goldziher, the
Orientalist of world-wide renown, Professor Robert A. Nadler, the
famous Budapest painter, and leader of the Hungarian Theosophical
Society.”
His sojourn in the United States of America
It was reserved, however, for the North American continent to witness
the most astonishing manifestation of the boundless vitality
‘Abdu’l-Bahá exhibited in the course of these journeys.
The remarkable progress achieved by the organized community of His
followers in the United States and Canada, the marked receptivity of
the American public to His Message, as well as His consciousness of
the high destiny awaiting the people of that continent, fully
warranted the expenditure of time and energy which he devoted to this
most important phase of His travels. A visit which entailed a journey
of over five thousand miles, which lasted from April to December,
which carried Him from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast and back,
which elicited discourses of such number as to fill no less than
three volumes, was to mark the climax of those journeys, and was
fully justified by the far-reaching results which He well knew such
labors on His part would produce. “This long voyage,”
He
told His assembled followers on the occasion of His first meeting
with them in New York, “will prove how great is My love for you.
There were many troubles and vicissitudes, but in the thought of
meeting you, all these things vanished and were forgotten.”
The character of the acts He performed fully demonstrated the
importance He attached to that visit. The laying, with His own hands,
of the dedication stone of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, by
the shore of Lake Michigan, in the vicinity of Chicago, on the
recently purchased property, and in the presence of a representative
gathering of Bahá’ís from East and West; the dynamic affirmation
by Him of the implications of the Covenant instituted by Bahá’u’lláh,
following the reading of the newly translated Tablet of the Branch,
in a general assembly of His followers in New York, designated
henceforth as the “City of the Covenant”; the moving ceremony in
Inglewood, California, marking His special pilgrimage to the grave of
Thornton Chase, the “first American believer,” and indeed the
first to embrace the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh in the Western world;
the symbolic Feast He Himself offered to a large gathering of His
disciples assembled in the open air, and in the green setting of a
June day at West Englewood, in New Jersey; the blessing He bestowed
on the Open Forum at Green Acre, in Maine, on the banks of the
Piscataqua River, where many of His followers had gathered, and which
was to evolve into one of the first Bahá’í summer schools of the
Western Hemisphere and be recognized as one of the earliest
endowments established in the American continent; His address to an
audience of several hundred attending the last session of the
newly-founded Bahá’í Temple Unity held in Chicago; and, last but
not least, the exemplary act He performed by uniting in wedlock two
of His followers of different nationalities, one of the white, the
other of the Negro race — these must rank among the outstanding
functions associated with His visit to the community of the American
believers, functions designed to pave the way for the erection of
their central House of Worship, to fortify them against the tests
they were soon to endure, to cement their unity, and to bless the
beginnings of that Administrative Order which they were soon to
initiate and champion.
No less remarkable were ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s public activities
in the course of His association with the multitude of people with
whom He came in contact during His tour across a continent. A full
account of these diversified activities which crowded His days during
no less than eight months, would be beyond the scope of this survey.
Suffice it to say that in the city of New York alone He delivered
public addresses in, and made formal visits to, no less than
fifty-five different places. Peace societies, Christian and Jewish
congregations, colleges and universities, welfare and charitable
organizations, members of ethical cults, New Thought centers,
metaphysical groups, Women’s clubs, scientific associations,
gatherings of Esperantists, Theosophists, Mormons, and agnostics,
institutions for the advancement of the colored people,
representatives of the Syrian, the Armenian, the Greek, the Chinese,
and Japanese communities — all were brought into contact with His
dynamic presence, and were privileged to hear from His lips His
Father’s Message. Nor was the press either in its editorial comment
or in the publication of reports of His lectures, slow to appreciate
the breadth of His vision or the character of His summons.
Highlights of His travels
His discourse at the Peace Conferences at Lake Mohonk; His addresses
to large gatherings at Columbia, Howard and New York Universities;
His participation in the fourth annual conference of the National
Association for the Advancement of the Colored People; His fearless
assertion of the truth of the prophetic Missions of both Jesus Christ
and Muḥammad in Temple Emmanu-El, a Jewish synagogue in San
Francisco, where no less than two thousand people were gathered; His
illuminating discourse before an audience of eighteen hundred
students and one hundred and eighty teachers and professors at Leland
Stanford University; His memorable visit to the Bowery Mission in the
slums of New York; the brilliant reception given in His honor in
Washington, at which many outstanding figures in the social life of
the capital were presented to Him — these stand out as the highlights
of the unforgettable Mission He undertook in the service of His
Father’s Cause. Secretaries of State, Ambassadors, Congressmen,
distinguished rabbis and churchmen, and other people of eminence
attained His presence, among whom were such figures as Dr. D. S.
Jordan, President of Leland Stanford University, Prof. Jackson of
Columbia University, Prof. Jack of Oxford University, Rabbi Stephen
Wise of New York, Dr. Martin A. Meyer, Rabbi Joseph L. Levy, Rabbi
Abram Simon, Alexander Graham Bell, Rabindranath Tagore, Hon.
Franklin K. Lane, Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie, Hon.
Franklin MacVeagh, Secretary of the United States Treasury, Lee
McClung, Mr. Roosevelt, Admiral Wainwright, Admiral Peary, the
British, Dutch and Swiss Ministers in Washington, Yúsuf Ḍíyá
Páshá, the Turkish Ambassador in that city, Thomas Seaton,
Hon. William Sulzer and Prince Muḥammad-‘Alí of Egypt, the
Khedive’s brother.
“When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá visited this country for the first
time in 1912,” a commentator on His American travels has written,
“He found a large and sympathetic audience waiting to greet Him
personally and to receive from His own lips His loving and spiritual
message.… Beyond the words spoken there was something indescribable
in His personality that impressed profoundly all who came into His
presence. The dome-like head, the patriarchal beard, the eyes that
seemed to have looked beyond the reach of time and sense, the soft
yet clearly penetrating voice, the translucent humility, the never
failing love, — but above all, the sense of power mingled with
gentleness that invested His whole being with a rare majesty of
spiritual exaltation that both set Him apart, and yet that brought
Him near to the lowliest soul, — it was all this, and much more that
can never be defined, that have left with His many … friends,
memories that are ineffaceable and unspeakably precious.”
A survey, however inadequate of the varied and immense activities of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His tour of Europe and America cannot
leave without mention some of the strange incidents that would often
accompany personal contact with Him. The bold determination of a
certain indomitable youth who, fearing ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would
not be able to visit the Western states, and unable himself to pay
for a train journey to New England, had traveled all the way from
Minneapolis to Maine lying on the rods between the wheels of a train;
the transformation effected in the life of the son of a country
rector in England, who, in his misery and poverty, had resolved,
whilst walking along the banks of the Thames, to put an end to his
existence, and who, at the sight of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
photograph displayed in a shop window, had inquired about Him,
hurried to His residence, and been so revived by His words of cheer
and comfort as to abandon all thought of self-destruction; the
extraordinary experience of a woman whose little girl, as the result
of a dream she had had, insisted that Jesus Christ was in the world,
and who, at the sight of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s picture exposed
in the window of a magazine store, had instantly identified it as
that of the Jesus Christ of her dream — an act which impelled her
mother, after reading that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was in Paris, to
take the next boat for Europe and hasten to attain His presence; the
decision of the editor of a journal printed in Japan to break his
journey to Tokyo at Constantinople, and travel to London for “the
joy of spending one evening in His presence”; the touching scene
when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, receiving from the hands of a Persian
friend, recently arrived in London from ‘Ishqábád, a
cotton handkerchief containing a piece of dry black bread and a
shrivelled apple — the offering of a poor Bahá’í workman in that
city — opened it before His assembled guests, and, leaving His
luncheon untouched, broke pieces off that bread, and partaking
Himself of it shared it with those who were present — these are but a
few of a host of incidents that shed a revealing light on some
personal aspects of His memorable journeys.
Nor can certain scenes revolving around that majestic and patriarchal
Figure, as He moved through the cities of Europe and America, be ever
effaced from memory. The remarkable interview at which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
while placing lovingly His hand on the head of Archdeacon
Wilberforce, answered his many questions, whilst that distinguished
churchman sat on a low chair by His side; the still more remarkable
scene when that same Archdeacon, after having knelt with his entire
congregation to receive His benediction at St. John’s the Divine,
passed down the aisle to the vestry hand in hand with his Guest,
whilst a hymn was being sung by the entire assembly standing; the
sight of Jalálu’d-Dawlih, fallen prostrate at His feet, profuse in
his apologies and imploring His forgiveness for his past iniquities;
the enthusiastic reception accorded Him at Leland Stanford University
when, before the gaze of well nigh two thousand professors and
students, He discoursed on some of the noblest truths underlying His
message to the West; the touching spectacle at Bowery Mission when
four hundred of the poor of New York filed past Him, each receiving a
piece of silver from His blessed hands; the acclamation of a Syrian
woman in Boston who, pushing aside the crowd that had gathered around
Him, flung herself at His feet, exclaiming, “I confess that in Thee
I have recognized the Spirit of God and Jesus Christ Himself”; the
no less fervent tribute paid Him by two admiring Arabs who, as He was
leaving that city for Dublin, N. H., cast themselves before Him, and,
sobbing aloud, avowed that He was God’s own Messenger to mankind;
the vast congregation of two thousand Jews assembled in a synagogue
in San Francisco, intently listening to His discourse as He
demonstrated the validity of the claims advanced by both Jesus Christ
and Muḥammad; the gathering He addressed one night in Montreal, at
which, in the course of His speech, His turban fell from His head, so
carried away was He by the theme He was expounding; the boisterous
crowd in a very poor quarter of Paris, who, awed by His presence,
reverently and silently made way for Him as He passed through their
midst, while returning from a Mission Hall whose congregation He had
been addressing; the characteristic gesture of a Zoroastrian
physician who, arriving in breathless haste on the morning of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s departure from London to bid Him
farewell, anointed with fragrant oil first His head and His breast,
and then, touching the hands of all present, placed round His neck
and shoulders a garland of rosebuds and lilies; the crowd of visitors
arriving soon after dawn, patiently waiting on the doorsteps of His
house in Cadogan Gardens until the door would be opened for their
admittance; His majestic figure as He paced with a vigorous step the
platform, or stood with hands upraised to pronounce the benediction,
in church and synagogue alike, and before vast audiences of reverent
listeners; the unsolicited mark of respect shown Him by distinguished
society women in London, who would spontaneously curtsy when ushered
into His presence; the poignant sight when He stooped low to the
grave of His beloved disciple, Thornton Chase, in Inglewood Cemetery,
and kissed his tombstone, an example which all those present hastened
to follow; the distinguished gathering of Christians, Jews and
Muslims, men and women and representative of both the East and the
West, assembled to hear His discourse on world unity in the mosque at
Woking — such scenes as these, even in the cold record of the printed
page, must still have much of their original impressiveness and
power.
Who knows what thoughts flooded the heart of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
as He found Himself the central figure of such memorable scenes as
these? Who knows what thoughts were uppermost in His mind as He sat
at breakfast beside the Lord Mayor of London, or was received with
extraordinary deference by the Khedive himself in his palace, or as
He listened to the cries of “Alláh-u-Abhá” and to the hymns of
thanksgiving and praise that would herald His approach to the
numerous and brilliant assemblages of His enthusiastic followers and
friends organized in so many cities of the American continent? Who
knows what memories stirred within Him as He stood before the
thundering waters of Niagara, breathing the free air of a far distant
land, or gazed, in the course of a brief and much-needed rest, upon
the green woods and countryside in Glenwood Springs, or moved with a
retinue of Oriental believers along the paths of the Trocadero
gardens in Paris, or walked alone in the evening beside the majestic
Hudson on Riverside Drive in New York, or as He paced the terrace of
the Hotel du Parc at Thonon-les-Bains, overlooking the Lake of
Geneva, or as He watched from Serpentine Bridge in London the pearly
chain of lights beneath the trees stretching as far as the eye could
see? Memories of the sorrows, the poverty, the overhanging doom of
His earlier years; memories of His mother who sold her gold buttons
to provide Him, His brother and His sister with sustenance, and who
was forced, in her darkest hours, to place a handful of dry flour in
the palm of His hand to appease His hunger; of His own childhood when
pursued and derided by a mob of ruffians in the streets of Ṭihrán;
of the damp and gloomy room, formerly a morgue, which He occupied in
the barracks of ‘Akká and of His imprisonment in the dungeon of
that city — memories such as these must surely have thronged His
mind. Thoughts, too, must have visited Him of the Báb’s captivity
in the mountain fastnesses of Ádhirbáyján, when at night
time He was refused even a lamp, and of His cruel and tragic
execution when hundreds of bullets riddled His youthful breast. Above
all His thoughts must have centered on Bahá’u’lláh, Whom He
loved so passionately and Whose trials He had witnessed and had
shared from His boyhood. The vermin-infested Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán;
the bastinado inflicted upon Him in Ámul; the humble fare which
filled His kashkúl while He lived for two years the life of a
dervish in the mountains of Kurdistán; the days in Baghdád
when He did not even possess a change of linen, and when His
followers subsisted on a handful of dates; His confinement behind the
prison-walls of ‘Akká, when for nine years even the sight of
verdure was denied Him; and the public humiliation to which He was
subjected at government headquarters in that city — pictures from the
tragic past such as these must have many a time overpowered Him with
feelings of mingled gratitude and sorrow, as He witnessed the many
marks of respect, of esteem, and honor now shown Him and the Faith
which He represented. “O Bahá’u’lláh! What hast Thou
done?”
He, as reported by the chronicler of His travels, was
heard to exclaim one evening as He was being swiftly driven to fulfil
His third engagement of the day in Washington, “O Bahá’u’lláh!
May my life be sacrificed for Thee! O Bahá’u’lláh! May my soul
be offered up for Thy sake! How full were Thy days with trials and
tribulations! How severe the ordeals Thou didst endure! How solid the
foundation Thou hast finally laid, and how glorious the banner Thou
didst hoist!”
“One day, as He was strolling,” that same
chronicler has testified, “He called to remembrance the days of the
Blessed Beauty, referring with sadness to His sojourn in
Sulaymáníyyih, to His loneliness and to the wrongs inflicted upon
Him. Though He had often recounted that episode, that day He was so
overcome with emotion that He sobbed aloud in His grief.… All His
attendants wept with Him, and were plunged into sorrow as they heard
the tale of the woeful trials endured by the Ancient Beauty, and
witnessed the tenderness of heart manifested by His Son.”
A most significant scene in a century-old drama had been enacted. A
glorious chapter in the history of the first Bahá’í century had
been written. Seeds of undreamt-of potentialities had, with the hand
of the Center of the Covenant Himself, been sown in some of the
fertile fields of the Western world. Never in the entire range of
religious history had any Figure of comparable stature arisen to
perform a labor of such magnitude and imperishable worth. Forces were
unleashed through those fateful journeys which even now, at a
distance of well nigh thirty-five years, we are unable to measure or
comprehend. Already a Queen, inspired by the powerful arguments
adduced by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the course of His addresses in
support of the Divinity of Muḥammad, has proclaimed her faith, and
borne public testimony to the Divine origin of the Prophet of Islám.
Already a President of the United States, imbibing some of the
principles so clearly enunciated by Him in His discourses, has
incorporated them in a Peace Program which stands out as the boldest
and noblest proposal yet made for the well-being and security of
mankind. And already, alas! a world which proved deaf to His warnings
and refused to heed His summons has plunged itself into two global
wars of unprecedented severity, the repercussions of which none as
yet can even dimly visualize.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s historic journeys to the West, and in
particular His eight-month tour of the United States of America, may
be said to have marked the culmination of His ministry, a ministry
whose untold blessings and stupendous achievements only future
generations can adequately estimate. As the day-star of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Revelation had shone forth in its meridian splendor at the hour of
the proclamation of His Message to the rulers of the earth in the
city of Adrianople, so did the Orb of His Covenant mount its zenith
and shed its brightest rays when He Who was its appointed Center
arose to blazon the glory and greatness of His Father’s Faith among
the peoples of the West.
That divinely instituted Covenant had, shortly after its inception,
demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt its invincible strength
through its decisive triumph over the dark forces which its
Arch-Breaker had with such determination arrayed against it. Its
energizing power had soon after been proclaimed through the signal
victories which its torch-bearers had so rapidly and courageously won
in the far-off cities of Western Europe and the United States of
America. Its high claims had, moreover, been fully vindicated through
its ability to safeguard the unity and integrity of the Faith in both
the East and the West. It had subsequently given further proof of its
indomitable strength by the memorable victory it registered through
the downfall of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, and the consequent
release of its appointed Center from a forty-year captivity. It had
provided for those still inclined to doubt its Divine origin yet
another indisputable testimony to its solidity by enabling
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in the face of formidable obstacles, to
effect the transfer and the final entombment of the Báb’s remains
in a mausoleum on Mt. Carmel. It had manifested also before all
mankind, with a force and in a measure hitherto unapproached, its
vast potentialities when it empowered Him in Whom its spirit and its
purpose were enshrined to embark on a three-year-long mission to the
Western world — a mission so momentous that it deserves to rank as
the greatest exploit ever to be associated with His ministry.
Nor were these, preeminent though they were, the sole fruits garnered
through the indefatigable efforts exerted so heroically by the Center
of that Covenant. The progress and extension of His Father’s Faith
in the East; the initiation of activities and enterprises which may
be said to signalize the beginnings of a future Administrative Order;
the erection of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the
Bahá’í world in the city of ‘Ishqábád in Russian
Turkistán; the expansion of Bahá’í literature; the revelation of
the Tablets of the Divine Plan; and the introduction of the Faith in
the Australian continent these may be regarded as the outstanding
achievements that have embellished the brilliant record of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s unique ministry.
In Persia, the cradle of the Faith, despite the persecutions which,
throughout the years of that ministry, persisted with unabated
violence, a noticeable change, marking the gradual emergence of a
proscribed community from its hitherto underground existence, could
be clearly discerned. Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, four years
after Bahá’u’lláh’s ascension, had, on the eve of his
jubilee, designed to mark a turning-point in the history of his
country, met his death at the hands of an assassin, named Mírzá
Riḍá, a follower of the notorious Siyyid Jamálu’d-Dín-i-Afghání,
an enemy of the Faith and one of the originators of the
constitutional movement which, as it gathered momentum, during the
reign of the Sháh’s son and successor, Muẓaffari’d-Dín,
was destined to involve in further difficulties an already hounded
and persecuted community. Even the Sháh’s assassination had
at first been laid at the door of that community, as evidenced by the
cruel death suffered, immediately after the murder of the sovereign,
by the renowned teacher and poet, Mírzá ‘Alí-Muḥammad,
surnamed “Varqá” (Dove) by Bahá’u’lláh, who, together with
his twelve-year-old son, Rúḥu’lláh, was inhumanly put to death
in the prison of Ṭihrán, by the brutal Ḥájibu’d-Dawlih, who,
after thrusting his dagger into the belly of the father and cutting
him into pieces, before the eyes of his son, adjured the boy to
recant, and, meeting with a blunt refusal, strangled him with a rope.
Three years previously a youth, named Muḥammad-Riḍáy-i-Yazdí,
was shot in Yazd, on the night of his wedding while proceeding from
the public bath to his home, the first to suffer martyrdom during
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry. In Turbát-i-Ḥaydaríyyih, in
consequence of the Sháh’s assassination, five persons,
known as the Shuhadáy-i-Khamsih (Five Martyrs), were
put to death. In Mashhad a well-known merchant, Ḥájí
Muḥammad-i-Tabrízí, was murdered and his corpse set on fire. An
interview was granted by the new sovereign and his Grand Vizir, the
unprincipled and reactionary Mírzá ‘Alí-Aṣghar Khán,
the Atábik-i-A‘ẓam, to two representative followers of the Faith
in Paris (1902), but it produced no real results whatever. On the
contrary, a fresh storm of persecutions broke out a few years later,
persecutions which, as the constitutional movement developed in that
country, grew ever fiercer as reactionaries brought groundless
accusations against the Bahá’ís, and publicly denounced them as
supporters and inspirers of the nationalist cause.
Renewed persecutions in Persia
A certain Muḥammad-Javád was stripped naked in Iṣfahán, and was
severely beaten with a whip of braided wires, while in Káshán
the adherents of the Faith of Jewish extraction were fined, beaten
and chained at the instigation of both the Muḥammadan clergy and
the Jewish doctors. It was, however, in Yazd and its environs that
the most bloody outrages committed during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
ministry occurred. In that city Ḥájí Mírzáy-i-Ḥalabí-Sáz
was so mercilessly flogged that his wife flung herself upon his body,
and was in her turn severely beaten, after which his skull was
lacerated by the cleaver of a butcher. His eleven-year-old son was
pitilessly thrashed, stabbed with penknives and tortured to death.
Within the space of half a day nine people met their death. A crowd
of about six thousand people, of both sexes, vented their fury upon
the helpless victims, a few going so far as to drink their blood. In
some instances, as was the case with a man named Mírzá
Asadu’lláh-i-Ṣabbágh, they plundered their property and
fought over its possession. They evinced such cruelty that some of
the government officials were moved to tears at the sight of the
harrowing scenes in which the women of that city played a
conspicuously shameful part.
In Taft several people were put to death, some of whom were shot and
their bodies dragged through the streets. A newly converted
eighteen-year-old youth, named Ḥusayn, was denounced by his own
father, and torn to pieces before the eyes of his mother, whilst
Muḥammad-Kamál was hacked into bits with knife, spade and pickaxe.
In Manshád, where the persecutions lasted nineteen days,
similar atrocities were perpetrated. An eighty-year-old man, named
Siyyid Mírzá, was instantly killed in his sleep by two huge stones
which were thrown on him; a Mírzá Ṣádiq, who asked for water,
had a knife plunged into his breast, his executioner afterwards
licking the blood from the blade, while Sháṭir-Ḥasan, one
of the victims, was seen before his death distributing some candy in
his possession among the executioners and dividing among them his
clothing. A sixty-five year old woman, Khadíjih-Sulṭán,
was hurled from the roof of a house; a believer named Mírzá
Muḥammad was tied to a tree, made a target for hundreds of bullets
and his body set on fire, whilst another, named Ustád
Riḍáy-i-Ṣaffár, was seen to kiss the hand of his murderer,
after which he was shot and his corpse heaped with insults.
In Banáduk, in Dih-Bálá, in Farásháh, in ‘Abbás-Ábád,
in Hanzá, in Ardikán, in Dawlat-Ábád and in Hamadán crimes of
similar nature were committed, an outstanding case being that of a
highly respected and courageous woman, named Fáṭimih-Bagum, who
was ignominiously dragged from her house, her veil was torn from her
head, her throat cut across, her belly ripped open; and having been
beaten by the savage crowd with every weapon they could lay hands on,
she was finally suspended from a tree and delivered to the flames.
In Sárí, in the days when the agitation for the constitution was
moving towards a climax, five believers of recognized standing, known
later as the Shuhadáy-i-Khamsih (Five Martyrs), were
done to death, whilst in Nayríz a ferocious assault, recalling that
of Yazd, was launched by the enemy, in which nineteen lost their
lives, among them the sixty-five year old Mullá ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd,
a blind man who was shot and his body foully abused, and in the
course of which a considerable amount of property was plundered, and
numerous women and children had to flee for their lives, or seek
refuge in mosques, or live in the ruins of their houses, or remain
shelterless by the wayside.
In Sírján, in Dúgh-Ábád, in Tabríz, in Ávih, in Qum, in
Najaf-Ábád, in Sangsar, in Shahmírzád, in Iṣfahán, and
in Jahrum redoubtable and remorseless enemies, both religious and
political, continued, under various pretexts, and even after the
signing of the Constitution by the Sháh in 1906, and during
the reign of his successors, Muḥammad-‘Alí Sháh and
Aḥmad Sháh, to slay, torture, plunder and abuse the members
of a community who resolutely refused to either recant or deviate a
hair’s breadth from the path laid down for them by their Leaders.
Even during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s journeys to the West, and
after His return to the Holy Land, and indeed till the end of His
life, He continued to receive distressing news of the martyrdom of
His followers, and of the outrages perpetrated against them by an
insatiable enemy. In Dawlat-Ábád, a prince of the royal blood,
Ḥabíbu’lláh Mírzá by name, a convert to the Faith who had
consecrated his life to its service, was slain with a hatchet and his
corpse set on fire. In Mashhad the learned and pious Shaykh
‘Alí-Akbar-i-Qúchání was shot to death. In Sulṭán-Ábád,
Mírzá ‘Alí-Akbar and seven members of his family including a
forty day old infant were barbarously massacred. Persecutions of
varying degrees of severity broke out in Ná’ín, in Shahmírzád,
in Bandar-i-Jaz and in Qamṣar. In Kirmánsháh, the martyr
Mírzá Ya‘qúb-i-Muttaḥidih, the ardent twenty-five year old
Jewish convert to the Faith, was the last to lay down his life during
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry; and his mother, according to
his own instructions, celebrated his martyrdom in Hamadán with
exemplary fortitude. In every instance the conduct of the believers
testified to the indomitable spirit and unyielding tenacity that
continued to distinguish the lives and services of the Persian
followers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.
Despite these intermittent severe persecutions the Faith that had
evoked in its heroes so rare a spirit of self-sacrifice was steadily
and silently growing. Engulfed for a time and almost extinguished in
the sombre days following the martyrdom of the Báb, driven
underground throughout the period of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry,
it began, after His ascension, under the unerring guidance, and as a
result of the unfailing solicitude, of a wise, a vigilant and loving
Master, to gather its forces, and gradually to erect the embryonic
institutions which were to pave the way for the establishment, at a
later period, of its Administrative Order. It was during this period
that the number of its adherents rapidly multiplied, that its range,
now embracing every province of that kingdom, steadily widened, and
the rudimentary forms of its future Assemblies were inaugurated. It
was during this period, at a time when state schools and colleges
were practically non-existent in that country, and when the education
given in existing religious institutions was lamentably defective,
that its earliest schools were established, beginning with the
Tarbíyat, schools in Ṭihrán for both boys and girls, and followed
by the Ta’yíd and Mawhibat schools in Hamadán, the
Vaḥdat-i-Bashar school in Káshán and other similar
educational institutions in Bárfurúsh and Qazvín. It was
during these years that concrete and effectual assistance, both
spiritual and material, in the form of visiting teachers from both
Europe and America, of nurses, instructors, and physicians, was first
extended to the Bahá’í community in that land, these workers
constituting the vanguard of that host of helpers which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
promised would arise in time to further the interests of the Faith as
well as those of the country in which it was born. It was in the
course of these years that the term Bábí, as an appellation,
designating the followers of Bahá’u’lláh in that country, was
universally discarded by the masses in favor of the word Bahá’í,
the former henceforth being exclusively applied to the fast dwindling
number of the followers of Mírzá Yaḥyá. During this period,
moreover, the first systematic attempts were made to organize and
stimulate the teaching work undertaken by the Persian believers,
attempts which, apart from reinforcing the foundations of the
community, were instrumental in attracting to its cause several
outstanding figures in the public life of that country, not excluding
certain prominent members of the Shí‘ah sacerdotal order,
and even descendants of some of the worst persecutors of the Faith.
It was during the years of that ministry that the House of the Báb
in Shíráz, ordained by Bahá’u’lláh as a center of
pilgrimage for His followers, and now so recognized, was by order of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá and through His assistance, restored, and
that it became increasingly a focus of Bahá’í life and activity
for those who were deprived by circumstances of visiting either the
Most Great House in Baghdád or the Most Holy Tomb in ‘Akká.
Construction of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in ‘Ishqábád
More conspicuous than any of these undertakings, however, was the
erection of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the
Bahá’í world in the city of ‘Ishqábád, a center
founded in the days of Bahá’u’lláh, where the initial steps
preparatory to its construction, had been already undertaken during
His lifetime. Initiated at about the close of the first decade of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry (1902); fostered by Him at every
stage in its development; personally supervised by the venerable Ḥájí
Mírzá Muḥammad-Taqí, the Vakílu’d-Dawlih, a cousin of the
Báb, who dedicated his entire resources to its establishment, and
whose dust now reposes at the foot of Mt. Carmel under the shadow of
the Tomb of his beloved Kinsman; carried out according to the
directions laid down by the Center of the Covenant Himself; a lasting
witness to the fervor and the self-sacrifice of the Oriental
believers who were resolved to execute the bidding of Bahá’u’lláh
as revealed in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, this enterprise must rank not only
as the first major undertaking launched through the concerted efforts
of His followers in the Heroic Age of His Faith, but as one of the
most brilliant and enduring achievements in the history of the first
Bahá’í century.
The edifice itself, the foundation stone of which was laid in the
presence of General Krupatkin, the governor-general of Turkistán,
who had been delegated by the Czar to represent him at the ceremony,
has thus been minutely described by a Bahá’í visitor from the
West: “The Mashriqu’l-Adhkár stands in the heart
of the city; its high dome standing out above the trees and house
tops being visible for miles to the travelers as they approach the
town. It is in the center of a garden bounded by four streets. In the
four corners of this enclosure are four buildings: one is the Bahá’í
school; one is the traveler’s house, where pilgrims and wayfarers
are lodged; one is for the keepers, while the fourth one is to be
used as a hospital. Nine radial avenues approach the Temple from the
several parts of the grounds, one of which, the principal approach to
the building, leads from the main gateway of the grounds to the
principal portal of the Temple.” “In plan,” he further adds,
“the building is composed of three sections; namely, the central
rotunda, the aisle or ambulatory which surrounds it, and the loggia
which surrounds the entire building. It is built on the plan of a
regular polygon of nine sides. One side is occupied by the monumental
main entrance, flanked by minarets — a high arched portico extending
two stories in height recalling in arrangement the architecture of
the world famous Taj Mahal at Agra in India, the delight of the world
to travelers, many of whom pronounce it to be the most beautiful
temple in the world. Thus the principal doorway opens toward the
direction of the Holy land. The entire building is surrounded by two
series of loggias — one upper and one lower — which opens out upon
the garden giving a very beautiful architectural effect in harmony
with the luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation which fills the garden …
The interior walls of the rotunda are treated in five distinct
stories. First, a series of nine arches and piers which separate the
rotunda from the ambulatory. Second, a similar treatment with
balustrades which separate the triforium gallery (which is above the
ambulatory and is reached by two staircases in the loggias placed one
on either side of the main entrance) from the well of the rotunda.
Third, a series of nine blank arches filled with fretwork, between
which are escutcheons bearing the Greatest Name. Fourth, a series of
nine large arched windows. Fifth, a series of eighteen bull’s eye
windows. Above and resting on a cornice surmounting this last story
rises the inner hemispherical shell of the dome. The interior is
elaborately decorated in plaster relief work … The whole structure
impresses one by its mass and strength.”
Nor should mention be omitted of the two schools for boys and girls
which were established in that city, of the pilgrim house instituted
in the close vicinity of the Temple, of the Spiritual Assembly and
its auxiliary bodies formed to administer the affairs of a growing
community, and of the new centers of activity inaugurated in various
towns and cities in the province of Turkistán — all testifying to
the vitality which the Faith had displayed ever since its inception
in that land.
Consolidation of the Faith in the East, in Europe, and in the North American continent
A parallel if less spectacular development could be observed in the
Caucasus. After the establishment of the first center and the
formation of an Assembly in Bákú, a city which Bahá’í pilgrims,
traveling in increasing numbers from Persia to the Holy Land via
Turkey, invariably visited, new groups began to be organized, and,
evolving later into well-established communities, cooperated in
increasing measure with their brethren both in Turkistán and Persia.
In Egypt a steady increase in the number of the adherents of the
Faith was accompanied by a general expansion in its activities. The
establishments of new centers; the consolidation of the chief center
established in Cairo; the conversion, largely through the
indefatigable efforts of the learned Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl, of
several prominent students and teachers of the Azhar
University — premonitory symptoms foreshadowing the advent of the
promised day on which, according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the
standard and emblem of the Faith would be implanted in the heart of
that time-honored Islamic seat of learning; the translation into
Arabic and the dissemination of some of the most important writings
of Bahá’u’lláh revealed in Persian, together with other Bahá’í
literature; the printing of books, treatises and pamphlets by Bahá’í
authors and scholars; the publication of articles in the Press
written in defense of the Faith and for the purpose of broadcasting
its message; the formation of rudimentary administrative institutions
in the capital as well as in nearby centers; the enrichment of the
life of the community through the addition of converts of Kurdish,
Coptic, and Armenian origin — these may be regarded as the first
fruits garnered in a country which, blessed by the footsteps of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was, in later years, to play a historic part
in the emancipation of the Faith, and which, by virtue of its unique
position as the intellectual center of both the Arab and Islamic
worlds, must inevitably assume a notable and decisive share of
responsibility in the final establishment of that Faith throughout
the East.
Even more remarkable was the expansion of Bahá’í activity in
India and Burma, where a steadily growing community, now including
among its members representatives of the Zoroastrian, the Islamic,
the Hindu and the Buddhist Faiths, as well as members of the Sikh
community, succeeded in establishing its outposts, as far as Mandalay
and the village of Daidanaw Kalazoo, in the Hanthawaddy district of
Burma, at which latter place no less than eight hundred Bahá’ís
resided, possessing a school, a court, and a hospital of their own,
as well as land for community cultivation, the proceeds of which they
devoted to the furtherance of the interests of their Faith.
In ‘Iráq, where the House occupied by Bahá’u’lláh was
entirely restored and renovated, and where a small yet intrepid
community struggled in the face of constant opposition to regulate
and administer its affairs; in Constantinople, where a Bahá’í
center was established; in Tunis where the foundations of a local
community were firmly laid; in Japan, in China, and in Honolulu to
which Bahá’í teachers traveled, and where they settled and
taught — in all of these places the manifold evidences of the guiding
hand of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the tangible effects of His
sleepless vigilance and unfailing care could be clearly perceived.
Nor did the nascent communities established in France, England,
Germany and the United States cease to receive, after His memorable
visits to those countries, further tokens of His special interest in,
and solicitude for, their welfare and spiritual advancement. It was
in consequence of His directions and the unceasing flow of His
Tablets, addressed to the members of these communities, as well as
His constant encouragement of the efforts they were exerting, that
Bahá’í centers steadily multiplied, that public meetings were
organized, that new periodicals were published, that translations of
some of the best known works of Bahá’u’lláh and of the Tablets
of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were printed and circulated in the
English, the French, and German languages, and that the initial
attempts to organize the affairs, and consolidate the foundations, of
these newly established communities were undertaken.
In the North American continent, more particularly, the members of a
flourishing community, inspired by the blessings bestowed by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as well as by His example and the acts He
performed in the course of His prolonged visit to their country, gave
an earnest of the magnificent enterprise they were to carry through
in later years. They purchased the twelve remaining lots forming part
of the site of their projected Temple, selected, during the sessions
of their 1920 Convention, the design of the French Canadian Bahá’í
architect, Louis Bourgeois, placed the contract for the excavation
and the laying of its foundations, and succeeded soon after in
completing the necessary arrangements for the construction of its
basement: measures which heralded the stupendous efforts which, after
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ascension, culminated in the erection of
its superstructure and the completion of its exterior ornamentation.
The War of 1914–1918, and its effect on the Center of the Faith
The war of 1914–18, repeatedly foreshadowed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
in the dark warnings He uttered in the course of His western travels,
and which broke out eight months after His return to the Holy Land,
once more cast a shadow of danger over His life, the last that was to
darken the years of His agitated yet glorious ministry.
The late entry of the United States of America in that
world-convulsing conflict, the neutrality of Persia, the remoteness
of India and of the Far East from the theater of operations, insured
the protection of the overwhelming majority of His followers, who,
though for the most part entirely cut off for a number of years from
the spiritual center of their Faith, were still able to conduct their
affairs and safeguard the fruits of their recent achievements in
comparative safety and freedom.
In the Holy Land, however, though the outcome of that tremendous
struggle was to liberate once and for all the Heart and Center of the
Faith from the Turkish yoke, a yoke which had imposed for so long
upon its Founder and His Successor such oppressive and humiliating
restrictions, yet severe privations and grave dangers continued to
surround its inhabitants during the major part of that conflict, and
renewed, for a time, the perils which had confronted ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
during the years of His incarceration in ‘Akká. The privations
inflicted on the inhabitants by the gross incompetence, the shameful
neglect, the cruelty and callous indifference of both the civil and
military authorities, though greatly alleviated through the bountiful
generosity, the foresight and the tender care of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
were aggravated by the rigors of a strict blockade. A bombardment of
Haifa by the Allies was a constant threat, at one time so real that
it necessitated the temporary removal of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His
family and members of the local community to the village of Abú-Sinán
at the foot of the hills east of ‘Akká. The Turkish
Commander-in-Chief, the brutal, the all-powerful and unscrupulous
Jamál Páshá, an inveterate enemy of the Faith, through his
own ill-founded suspicions and the instigation of its enemies, had
already grievously afflicted ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and even
expressed his intention of crucifying Him and of razing to the ground
the Tomb of Bahá’u’lláh. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself still
suffered from the ill-health and exhaustion brought on by the
fatigues of His three-year journeys. He felt acutely the virtual
stoppage of all communication with most of the Bahá’í centers
throughout the world. Agony filled His soul at the spectacle of human
slaughter precipitated through humanity’s failure to respond to the
summons He had issued, or to heed the warnings He had given. Surely
sorrow upon sorrow was added to the burden of trials and vicissitudes
which He, since His boyhood, had borne so heroically for the sake,
and in the service, of His Father’s Cause.
And yet during these somber days, the darkness of which was
reminiscent of the tribulations endured during the most dangerous
period of His incarceration in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká;
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, whilst in the precincts of His Father’s
Shrine, or when dwelling in the House He occupied in ‘Akká, or
under the shadow of the Báb’s sepulcher on Mt. Carmel, was moved
to confer once again, and for the last time in His life, on the
community of His American followers a signal mark of His special
favor by investing them, on the eve of the termination of His earthly
ministry, through the revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan,
with a world mission, whose full implications even now, after the
lapse of a quarter of a century, still remain undisclosed, and whose
unfoldment thus far, though as yet in its initial stages, has so
greatly enriched the spiritual as well as the administrative annals
of the first Bahá’í century.
The conclusion of this terrible conflict, the stage in a
titanic convulsion long predicted by Bahá’u’lláh, not only
marked the extinction of Turkish rule in the Holy Land and sealed the
doom of that military despot who had vowed to destroy ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
but also shattered once and for all the last hopes still entertained
by the remnant of Covenant-breakers who, untaught by the severe
retribution that had already overtaken them, still aspired to witness
the extinction of the light of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant.
Furthermore, it produced those revolutionary changes which, on the
one hand, fulfilled the ominous predictions made by Bahá’u’lláh
in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and enabled, according to Scriptural prophecy,
so large an element of the “outcasts of Israel,”
the
“remnant”
of the “flock,”
to “assemble”
in the Holy Land, and to be brought back to “their folds”
and “their own border,”
beneath the shadow of the
“Incomparable Branch,”
referred to by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
in His “Some Answered Questions,” and which, on the other hand,
gave birth to the institution of the League of Nations, the precursor
of that World Tribunal which, as prophesied by that same
“Incomparable Branch,” the peoples and nations of the earth must
needs unitedly establish.
No need to dwell on the energetic steps which the English believers
as soon as they had been apprized of the dire peril threatening the
life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá undertook to insure His security; on
the measures independently taken whereby Lord Curzon and others in
the British Cabinet were advised as to the critical situation at
Haifa; on the prompt intervention of Lord Lamington, who immediately
wrote to the Foreign Office to “explain the importance of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s position;” on the despatch which the
Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, on the day of the receipt of this
letter, sent to General Allenby, instructing him to “extend every
protection and consideration to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His family
and His friends;” on the cablegram subsequently sent by the
General, after the capture of Haifa, to London, requesting the
authorities to “notify the world that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is
safe;” on the orders which that same General issued to the General
Commanding Officer in command of the Haifa operations to insure
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s safety, thus frustrating the express
intention of the Turkish Commander-in-Chief (according to information
which had reached the British Intelligence Service) to “crucify
‘Abdu’l-Bahá and His family on Mt. Carmel” in the event
of the Turkish army being compelled to evacuate Haifa and retreat
northwards.
The three years which elapsed between the liberation of Palestine by
the British forces and the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were
marked by a further enhancement of the prestige which the Faith,
despite the persecutions to which it had been subjected, had acquired
at its world center, and by a still greater extension in the range of
its teaching activities in various parts of the world. The danger
which, for no less than three score years and five, had threatened
the lives of the Founders of the Faith and of the Center of His
Covenant, was now at long last through the instrumentality of that
war completely and definitely lifted. The Head of the Faith, and its
twin holy Shrines, in the plain of ‘Akká and on the slopes of Mt.
Carmel, were henceforth to enjoy for the first time, through the
substitution of a new and liberal régime for the corrupt
administration of the past, a freedom from restrictions which was
later expanded into a clearer recognition of the institutions of the
Cause. Nor were the British authorities slow to express their
appreciation of the rôle which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had played in
allaying the burden of suffering that had oppressed the inhabitants
of the Holy Land during the dark days of that distressing conflict.
The conferment of a knighthood upon Him at a ceremony specially held
for His sake in Haifa, at the residence of the British Governor, at
which notables of various communities had assembled; the visit paid
Him by General and Lady Allenby, who were His guests at luncheon in
Bahjí, and whom He conducted to the Tomb of Bahá’u’lláh; the
interview at His Haifa residence between Him and King Feisal who
shortly after became the ruler of ‘Iráq; the several calls paid
Him by Sir Herbert Samuel (later Viscount Samuel of Carmel) both
before and after his appointment as High Commissioner for Palestine;
His meeting with Lord Lamington who, likewise, called upon Him in
Haifa, as well as with the then Governor of Jerusalem, Sir Ronald
Storrs; the multiplying evidences of the recognition of His high and
unique position by all religious communities, whether Muslim,
Christian or Jewish; the influx of pilgrims who, from East and West,
flocked to the Holy Land in comparative ease and safety to visit the
Holy Tombs in ‘Akká and Haifa, to pay their share of homage to
Him, to celebrate the signal protection vouchsafed by Providence to
the Faith and its followers, and to give thanks for the final
emancipation of its Head and world Center from Turkish yoke — these
contributed, each in its own way, to heighten the prestige which the
Faith of Bahá’u’lláh had been steadily and gradually acquiring
through the inspired leadership of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
Expansion of Bahá’í activities and opening of the Australian continent
As the ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá drew to a close signs
multiplied of the resistless and manifold unfoldment of the Faith
both in the East and in the West, both in the shaping and
consolidation of its institutions and in the widening range of its
activities and its influence. In the city of ‘Ishqábád the
construction of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, which He
Himself had initiated, was successfully consummated. In Wilmette the
excavations for the Mother Temple of the West were carried out and
the contract placed for the construction of the basement of the
building. In Baghdád the initial steps were taken, according
to His special instructions, to reinforce the foundations and restore
the Most Great House associated with the memory of His Father. In the
Holy Land an extensive property east of the Báb’s Sepulcher was
purchased through the initiative of the Holy Mother with the support
of contributions from Bahá’ís in both the East and the West to
serve as a site for the future erection of the first Bahá’í
school at the world Administrative Center of the Faith. The site for
a Western Pilgrim House was acquired in the neighborhood of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s residence, and the building was erected
soon after His passing by American believers. The Oriental Pilgrim
House, erected on Mt. Carmel by a believer from ‘Ishqábád,
soon after the entombment of the Báb’s remains, for the
convenience of visiting pilgrims, was granted tax exemption by the
civil authorities (the first time such a privilege had been conceded
since the establishment of the Faith in the Holy Land). The famous
scientist and entomologist, Dr. Auguste Forel, was converted to the
Faith through the influence of a Tablet sent him by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — one
of the most weighty the Master ever wrote. Another Tablet of
far-reaching importance was His reply to a communication addressed to
Him by the Executive Committee of the “Central Organization for a
Durable Peace,” which He dispatched to them at The Hague by the
hands of a special delegation. A new continent was opened to the
Cause when, in response to the Tablets of the Divine Plan unveiled at
the first Convention after the war, the great-hearted and heroic Hyde
Dunn, at the advanced age of sixty-two, promptly forsook his home in
California, and, seconded and accompanied by his wife, settled as a
pioneer in Australia, where he was able to carry the Message to no
less than seven hundred towns throughout that Commonwealth. A new
episode began when, in quick response to those same Tablets and their
summons, that star-servant of Bahá’u’lláh, the indomitable and
immortal Martha Root, designated by her Master “herald of the
Kingdom”
and “harbinger of the Covenant,”
embarked
on the first of her historic journeys which were to extend over a
period of twenty years, and to carry her several times around the
globe, and which ended only with her death far from home and in the
active service of the Cause she loved so greatly. These events mark
the closing stage of a ministry which sealed the triumph of the
Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation, and which will go down in
history as one of the most glorious and fruitful periods of the first
Bahá’í century.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s great work was now ended. The historic
Mission with which His Father had, twenty-nine years previously,
invested Him had been gloriously consummated. A memorable chapter in
the history of the first Bahá’í century had been written. The
Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation, in which He had
participated since its inception, and played so unique a rôle, had
drawn to a close. He had suffered as no disciple of the Faith, who
had drained the cup of martyrdom, had suffered, He had labored as
none of its greatest heroes had labored. He had witnessed triumphs
such as neither the Herald of the Faith nor its Author had ever
witnessed.
Events preceding His passing
At the close of His strenuous Western tours, which had called forth
the last ounce of His ebbing strength, He had written: “Friends,
the time is coming when I shall be no longer with you. I have done
all that could be done. I have served the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh
to the utmost of My ability. I have labored night and day all the
years of My life. O how I long to see the believers shouldering the
responsibilities of the Cause!… My days are numbered, and save this
there remains none other joy for me.”
Several years before He
had thus alluded to His passing: “O ye My faithful loved ones!
Should at any time afflicting events come to pass in the Holy Land,
never feel disturbed or agitated. Fear not, neither grieve. For
whatsoever thing happeneth will cause the Word of God to be exalted,
and His Divine fragrances to be diffused.”
And again:
“Remember, whether or not I be on earth, My presence will be
with you always.”
“Regard not the person of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,”
He thus counselled His friends in one of His last Tablets, “for
He will eventually take His leave of you all; nay, fix your gaze upon
the Word of God … The loved ones of God must arise with such
steadfastness that should, in one moment, hundreds of souls even as
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself be made a target for the darts of
woe, nothing whatsoever shall affect or lessen their … service to
the Cause of God.”
In a Tablet addressed to the American believers, a few days before He
passed away, He thus vented His pent-up longing to depart from this
world: “I have renounced the world and the people thereof … In
the cage of this world I flutter even as a frightened bird, and yearn
every day to take My flight unto Thy Kingdom. Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá!
Make Me drink of the cup of sacrifice, and set Me free.”
He
revealed a prayer less than six months before His ascension in honor
of a kinsman of the Báb, and in it wrote: “‘O Lord! My bones
are weakened, and the hoar hairs glisten on My head … and I have
now reached old age, failing in My powers.’ … No strength is
there left in Me wherewith to arise and serve Thy loved ones … O
Lord, My Lord! Hasten My ascension unto Thy sublime Threshold … and
My arrival at the Door of Thy grace beneath the shadow of Thy most
great mercy…”
Through the dreams He dreamed, through the conversations He held,
through the Tablets He revealed, it became increasingly evident that
His end was fast approaching. Two months before His passing He told
His family of a dream He had had. “I seemed,”
He said, “to
be standing within a great mosque, in the inmost shrine, facing the
Qiblih, in the place of the Imám himself. I became aware that a
large number of people were flocking into the mosque. More and yet
more crowded in, taking their places in rows behind Me, until there
was a vast multitude. As I stood I raised loudly the call to prayer.
Suddenly the thought came to Me to go forth from the mosque. When I
found Myself outside I said within Myself: ‘For what reason came I
forth, not having led the prayer? But it matters not; now that I have
uttered the Call to prayer, the vast multitude will of themselves
chant the prayer.’”
A few weeks later, whilst occupying a
solitary room in the garden of His house, He recounted another dream
to those around Him. “I dreamed a dream,”
He said, “and
behold, the Blessed Beauty (Bahá’u’lláh) came and said
to Me: ‘Destroy this room.’”
None of those present
comprehended the significance of this dream until He Himself had soon
after passed away, when it became clear to them all that by the
“room” was meant the temple of His body.
A month before His death (which occurred in the 78th year of His age,
in the early hours of the 28th of November, 1921) He had referred
expressly to it in some words of cheer and comfort that He addressed
to a believer who was mourning the loss of his brother. And about two
weeks before His passing He had spoken to His faithful gardener in a
manner that clearly indicated He knew His end to be nigh. “I am
so fatigued,”
He observed to him, “the hour is come when I
must leave everything and take My flight. I am too weary to walk.”
He added: “It was during the closing days of the Blessed Beauty,
when I was engaged in gathering together His papers which were strewn
over the sofa in His writing chamber in Bahjí, that He turned to Me
and said: ‘It is of no use to gather them, I must leave them and
flee away.’ I also have finished My work. I can do nothing more.
Therefore must I leave it, and take My departure.”
Till the very last day of His earthly life ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
continued to shower that same love upon high and low alike, to extend
that same assistance to the poor and the down-trodden, and to carry
out those same duties in the service of His Father’s Faith, as had
been His wont from the days of His boyhood. On the Friday before His
passing, despite great fatigue, He attended the noonday prayer at the
mosque, and distributed afterwards alms, as was His custom, among the
poor; dictated some Tablets — the last ones He revealed — ; blessed
the marriage of a trusted servant, which He had insisted should take
place that day; attended the usual meeting of the friends in His
home; felt feverish the next day, and being unable to leave the house
on the following Sunday, sent all the believers to the Tomb of the
Báb to attend a feast which a Pársí pilgrim was offering on the
occasion of the anniversary of the Declaration of the Covenant;
received with His unfailing courtesy and kindness that same
afternoon, and despite growing weariness, the Muftí of Haifa, the
Mayor and the Head of the Police; and inquired that night — the last
of His life — before He retired after the health of every member of
His household, of the pilgrims and of the friends in Haifa.
At 1:15 A.M. He arose, and, walking to a table in His room, drank
some water, and returned to bed. Later on, He asked one of His two
daughters who had remained awake to care for Him, to lift up the net
curtains, complaining that He had difficulty in breathing. Some
rose-water was brought to Him, of which He drank, after which He
again lay down, and when offered food, distinctly remarked: “You
wish Me to take some food, and I am going?”
A minute later His
spirit had winged its flight to its eternal abode, to be gathered, at
long last, to the glory of His beloved Father, and taste the joy of
everlasting reunion with Him.
The news of His passing, so sudden, so unexpected, spread like
wildfire throughout the town, and was flashed instantly over the
wires to distant parts of the globe, stunning with grief the
community of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh in East and West.
Messages from far and near, from high and low alike, through
cablegrams and letters, poured in conveying to the members of a
sorrow-stricken and disconsolate family expressions of praise, of
devotion, of anguish and of sympathy.
The British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Winston
Churchill, telegraphed immediately to the High Commissioner for
Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, instructing him to “convey to the
Bahá’í Community, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, their
sympathy and condolence.” Viscount Allenby, the High Commissioner
for Egypt, wired the High Commissioner for Palestine asking him to
“convey to the relatives of the late Sir ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
‘Abbás Effendi and to the Bahá’í Community” his “sincere
sympathy in the loss of their revered leader.” The Council of
Ministers in Baghdád instructed the Prime Minister Siyyid
‘Abdu’r-Raḥmán to extend their “sympathy to the family of
His Holiness ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in their bereavement.” The
Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General
Congreve, addressed to the High Commissioner for Palestine a message
requesting him to “convey his deepest sympathy to the family of the
late Sir ‘Abbás Bahá’í.” General Sir Arthur Money, former
Chief Administrator of Palestine, wrote expressing his sadness, his
profound respect and his admiration for Him as well as his sympathy
in the loss which His family had sustained. One of the distinguished
figures in the academic life of the University of Oxford, a famous
professor and scholar, wrote on behalf of himself and his wife: “The
passing beyond the veil into fuller life must be specially wonderful
and blessed for One Who has always fixed His thoughts on high, and
striven to lead an exalted life here below.”
Many and divers newspapers, such as the London “Times,” the
“Morning Post,” the “Daily Mail,” the “New York World,”
“Le Temps,” the “Times of India” and others, in different
languages and countries, paid their tribute to One Who had rendered
the Cause of human brotherhood and peace such signal and imperishable
services.
His funeral
The High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, sent immediately a message
conveying his desire to attend the funeral in person, in order as he
himself later wrote, to “express my respect for His creed and my
regard for His person.” As to the funeral itself, which took place
on Tuesday morning — a funeral the like of which Palestine had never
seen — no less than ten thousand people participated representing
every class, religion and race in that country. “A great throng,”
bore witness at a later date, the High Commissioner himself, “had
gathered together, sorrowing for His death, but rejoicing also for
His life.” Sir Ronald Storrs, Governor of Jerusalem at the time,
also wrote in describing the funeral: “I have never known a more
united expression of regret and respect than was called forth by the
utter simplicity of the ceremony.”
The coffin containing the remains of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was
borne to its last resting-place on the shoulders of His loved ones.
The cortège which preceded it was led by the City Constabulary
Force, acting as a Guard of Honor, behind which followed in order the
Boy Scouts of the Muslim and Christian communities holding aloft
their banners, a company of Muslim choristers chanting their verses
from the Qur’án, the chiefs of the Muslim community headed by the
Muftí, and a number of Christian priests, Latin, Greek and Anglican.
Behind the coffin walked the members of His family, the British High
Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, the Governor of Jerusalem, Sir
Ronald Storrs, the Governor of Phoenicia, Sir Stewart Symes,
officials of the government, consuls of various countries resident in
Haifa, notables of Palestine, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Druze,
Egyptians, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Europeans and Americans, men,
women and children. The long train of mourners, amid the sobs and
moans of many a grief-stricken heart, wended its slow way up the
slopes of Mt. Carmel to the Mausoleum of the Báb.
Close to the eastern entrance of the Shrine, the sacred casket was
placed upon a plain table, and, in the presence of that vast
concourse, nine speakers, who represented the Muslim, the Jewish and
Christian Faiths, and who included the Muftí of Haifa, delivered
their several funeral orations. These concluded, the High
Commissioner drew close to the casket, and, with bowed head fronting
the Shrine, paid his last homage of farewell to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:
the other officials of the Government followed his example. The
coffin was then removed to one of the chambers of the Shrine, and
there lowered, sadly and reverently, to its last resting-place in a
vault adjoining that in which were laid the remains of the Báb.
During the week following His passing, from fifty to a hundred of the
poor of Haifa were daily fed at His house, whilst on the seventh day
corn was distributed in His memory to about a thousand of them
irrespective of creed or race. On the fortieth day an impressive
memorial feast was held in His memory, to which over six hundred of
the people of Haifa, ‘Akká and the surrounding parts of Palestine
and Syria, including officials and notables of various religions and
races, were invited. More than one hundred of the poor were also fed
on that day.
One of the assembled guests, the Governor of Phoenicia, paid a last
tribute to the memory of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the following
words: “Most of us here have, I think, a clear picture of Sir
‘Abdu’l-Bahá ‘Abbás, of His dignified figure walking
thoughtfully in our streets, of His courteous and gracious manner, of
His kindness, of His love for little children and flowers, of His
generosity and care for the poor and suffering. So gentle was He, and
so simple, that in His presence one almost forgot that He was also a
great teacher, and that His writings and His conversations have been
a solace and an inspiration to hundreds and thousands of people in
the East and in the West.”
Thus was brought to a close the ministry of One Who was the
incarnation, by virtue of the rank bestowed upon Him by His Father,
of an institution that has no parallel in the entire field of
religious history, a ministry that marks the final stage in the
Apostolic, the Heroic and most glorious Age of the Dispensation of
Bahá’u’lláh.
Significance of His ministry
Through Him the Covenant, that “excellent and priceless
Heritage”
bequeathed by the Author of the Bahá’í
Revelation, had been proclaimed, championed and vindicated. Through
the power which that Divine Instrument had conferred upon Him the
light of God’s infant Faith had penetrated the West, had diffused
itself as far as the Islands of the Pacific, and illumined the
fringes of the Australian continent. Through His personal
intervention the Message, Whose Bearer had tasted the bitterness of a
life-long captivity, had been noised abroad, and its character and
purpose disclosed, for the first time in its history, before
enthusiastic and representative audiences in the chief cities of
Europe and of the North American continent. Through His unrelaxing
vigilance the holy remains of the Báb, brought forth at long last
from their fifty-year concealment, had been safely transported to the
Holy Land and permanently and befittingly enshrined in the very spot
which Bahá’u’lláh Himself had designated for them and had
blessed with His presence. Through His bold initiative the first
Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the Bahá’í world had been
reared in Central Asia, in Russian Turkistán, whilst through His
unfailing encouragement a similar enterprise, of still vaster
proportions, had been undertaken, and its land dedicated by Himself
in the heart of the North American continent. Through the sustaining
grace overshadowing Him since the inception of His ministry His royal
adversary had been humbled to the dust, the arch-breaker of His
Father’s Covenant had been utterly routed, and the danger which,
ever since Bahá’u’lláh had been banished to Turkish soil, had
been threatening the heart of the Faith, definitely removed. In
pursuance of His instructions, and in conformity with the principles
enunciated and the laws ordained by His Father, the rudimentary
institutions, heralding the formal inauguration of the Administrative
Order to be founded after His passing, had taken shape and been
established. Through His unremitting labors, as reflected in the
treatises He composed, the thousands of Tablets He revealed, the
discourses He delivered, the prayers, poems and commentaries He left
to posterity, mostly in Persian, some in Arabic and a few in Turkish,
the laws and principles, constituting the warp and woof of His
Father’s Revelation, had been elucidated, its fundamentals restated
and interpreted, its tenets given detailed application and the
validity and indispensability of its verities fully and publicly
demonstrated. Through the warnings He sounded, an unheeding humanity,
steeped in materialism and forgetful of its God, had been apprized of
the perils threatening to disrupt its ordered life, and made, in
consequence of its persistent perversity, to sustain the initial
shocks of that world upheaval which continues, until the present day,
to rock the foundations of human society. And lastly, through the
mandate He had issued to a valiant community, the concerted
achievements of whose members had shed so great a lustre on the
annals of His own ministry, He had set in motion a Plan which, soon
after its formal inauguration, achieved the opening of the Australian
continent, which, in a later period, was to be instrumental in
winning over the heart of a royal convert to His Father’s Cause,
and which, today, through the irresistible unfoldment of its
potentialities, is so marvellously quickening the spiritual life of
all the Republics of Latin America as to constitute a befitting
conclusion to the records of an entire century.
Nor should a survey of the outstanding features of so blessed and
fruitful a ministry omit mention of the prophecies which the unerring
pen of the appointed Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant has
recorded. These foreshadow the fierceness of the onslaught that the
resistless march of the Faith must provoke in the West, in India and
in the Far East when it meets the time-honored sacerdotal orders of
the Christian, the Buddhist and Hindu religions. They foreshadow the
turmoil which its emancipation from the fetters of religious
orthodoxy will cast in the American, the European, the Asiatic and
African continents. They foreshadow the gathering of the children of
Israel in their ancient homeland; the erection of the banner of
Bahá’u’lláh in the Egyptian citadel of Sunní Islám; the
extinction of the powerful influence wielded by the Shí‘ah
ecclesiastics in Persia; the load of misery which must needs oppress
the pitiful remnants of the breakers of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Covenant at the world center of His Faith; the splendor of the
institutions which that triumphant Faith must erect on the slopes of
a mountain, destined to be so linked with the city of ‘Akká that a
single grand metropolis will be formed to enshrine the spiritual as
well as the administrative seats of the future Bahá’í
Commonwealth; the conspicuous honor which the inhabitants of
Bahá’u’lláh’s native land in general, and its government in
particular, must enjoy in a distant future; the unique and enviable
position which the community of the Most Great Name in the North
American continent must occupy, as a direct consequence of the
execution of the world mission which He entrusted to them: finally
they foreshadow, as the sum and summit of all, the “hoisting of
the standard of God among all nations”
and the unification of
the entire human race, when “all men will adhere to one religion
… will be blended into one race, and become a single people.”
Nor can the revolutionary changes in the great world which that
ministry has witnessed be allowed to pass unnoticed — most of them
flowing directly from the warnings which were uttered by the Báb, in
the first chapter of His Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, on the very night of
the Declaration of His Mission in Shíráz, and which were
later reinforced by the pregnant passages addressed by Bahá’u’lláh
to the kings of the earth and the world’s religious leaders, in
both the Súriy-i-Mulúk and the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. The conversion of
the Portuguese monarchy and the Chinese empire into republics; the
collapse of the Russian, the German and Austrian empires, and the
ignominious fate which befell their rulers; the assassination of
Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, the fall of Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd — these may be said to have marked further
stages in the operation of that catastrophic process the inception of
which was signalized in the lifetime of Bahá’u’lláh by the
murder of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, by the dramatic downfall of
Napoleon III, and the extinction of the Third Empire, and by the
self-imposed imprisonment and virtual termination of the temporal
sovereignty of the Pope himself. Later, after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
passing, the same process was to be accelerated by the demise of the
Qájár dynasty in Persia, by the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy,
by the collapse of both the Sultanate and the Caliphate in Turkey, by
a swift decline in the fortunes of Shí‘ah Islám and of the
Christian Missions in the East, and by the cruel fate that is now
overtaking so many of the crowned heads of Europe.
Nor can this subject be dismissed without special reference to the
names of those men of eminence and learning who were moved, at
various stages of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry, to pay
tribute not only to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself but also to the
Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Such names as Count Leo Tolstoy, Prof.
Arminius Vambery, Prof. Auguste Forel, Dr. David Starr Jordan, the
Venerable Archdeacon Wilberforce, Prof. Jowett of Balliol, Dr. T. K.
Cheyne, Dr. Estlin Carpenter of Oxford University, Viscount Samuel of
Carmel, Lord Lamington, Sir Valentine Chirol, Rabbi Stephen Wise,
Prince Muḥammad-‘Alí of Egypt, Shaykh Muḥammad
‘Abdu, Midḥat Páshá, and Khurshíd Páshá
attest, by virtue of the tributes associated with them, the great
progress made by the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh under the brilliant
leadership of His exalted Son — tributes whose impressiveness was, in
later years, to be heightened by the historic, the repeated and
written testimonies which a famous Queen, a grand-daughter of Queen
Victoria, was impelled to bequeath to posterity as a witness of her
recognition of the prophetic mission of Bahá’u’lláh.
Fate of the enemies during His ministry
As for those enemies who have sedulously sought to extinguish the
light of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant, the condign punishment they
have been made to suffer is no less conspicuous than the doom which
overtook those who, in an earlier period, had so basely endeavored to
crush the hopes of a rising Faith and destroy its foundations.
To the assassination of the tyrannical Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh
and the subsequent extinction of the Qájár dynasty reference has
already been made. Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, after his
deposition, was made a prisoner of state and condemned to a life of
complete obscurity and humiliation, scorned by his fellow-rulers and
vilified by his subjects. The bloodthirsty Jamál Páshá, who
had resolved to crucify ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and raze to the
ground Bahá’u’lláh’s holy Tomb, had to flee for his life and
was slain, while a refugee in the Caucasus, by the hand of an
Armenian whose fellow-compatriots he had so pitilessly persecuted.
The scheming Jamálu’d-Dín Afghání, whose relentless
hostility and powerful influence had been so gravely detrimental to
the progress of the Faith in Near Eastern countries, was, after a
checkered career filled with vicissitudes, stricken with cancer, and
having had a major part of his tongue cut away in an unsuccessful
operation perished in misery. The four members of the ill-fated
Commission of Inquiry, despatched from Constantinople to seal the
fate of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, suffered, each in his turn, a
humiliation hardly less drastic than that which they had planned for
Him. ‘Árif Bey, the head of the Commission, seeking stealthily at
midnight to flee from the wrath of the Young Turks, was shot dead by
a sentry. Adham Bey succeeded in escaping to Egypt, but was robbed of
his possessions by his servant on the way, and was in the end
compelled to seek financial assistance from the Bahá’ís of Cairo,
a request which was not refused. Later he sought help from
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who immediately directed the believers to
present him with a sum on His behalf, an instruction which they were
unable to carry out owing to his sudden disappearance. Of the other
two members, one was exiled to a remote place, and the other died
soon after in abject poverty. The notorious Yaḥyá Bey, the Chief
of the Police in ‘Akká, a willing and powerful tool in the hand of
Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, the arch-breaker of Bahá’u’lláh’s
Covenant, witnessed the frustration of all the hopes he had
cherished, lost his position, and had eventually to beg for pecuniary
assistance from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. In Constantinople, in the
year which witnessed the downfall of ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, no less
than thirty-one dignitaries of the state, including ministers and
other high officers of the government, among whom numbered
redoubtable enemies of the Faith, were, in a single day, arrested and
condemned to the gallows, a spectacular retribution for the part they
had played in upholding a tyrannical régime and in endeavoring to
extirpate the Faith and its institutions.
In Persia, apart from the sovereign who had, in the full tide of his
hopes and the plenitude of his power, been removed from the scene in
so startling a manner, a number of princes, ministers and mujtahids,
who had actively participated in the suppression of a persecuted
community, including Kámrán Mírzá, the Ná’ibu’s-Salṭanih,
the Jalálu’d-Dawlih and Mírzá ‘Alí-Aṣghar Khán,
the Atábik-i-A‘ẓam, and Shaykh
Muḥammad-Taqíy-i-Najafí, the “Son of the Wolf,” lost, one by
one, their prestige and authority, sank into obscurity, abandoned all
hope of achieving their malevolent purpose, and lived, some of them,
long enough to behold the initial evidences of the ascendancy of a
Cause they had so greatly feared and so vehemently hated.
When we note that in the Holy Land, in Persia, and in the United
States of America certain exponents of Christian ecclesiasticism such
as Vatralsky, Wilson, Richardson or Easton, observing, and in some
cases fearing, the vigorous advances made by the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh
in Christian lands, arose to stem its progress; and when we watch the
recent and steady deterioration of their influence, the decline of
their power, the confusion in their ranks and the dissolution of some
of their old standing missions and institutions, in Europe, in the
Middle East and in Eastern Asia — may we not attribute this weakening
to the opposition which members of various Christian sacerdotal
orders began, in the course of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry,
to evince towards the followers and institutions of a Faith which
claims to be no less than the fulfilment of the Promise given by
Jesus Christ, and the establisher of the Kingdom He Himself had
prayed for and foretold?
And finally, he who, from the moment the Divine Covenant was born
until the end of his life, showed a hatred more unrelenting than that
which animated the afore-mentioned adversaries of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
who plotted more energetically than any one of them against Him, and
afflicted his Father’s Faith with a shame more grievous than any
which its external enemies had inflicted upon it — such a man,
together with the infamous crew of Covenant-breakers whom he had
misled and instigated, was condemned to witness, in a growing
measure, as had been the case with Mírzá Yaḥyá and his henchmen,
the frustration of his evil designs, the evaporation of all his
hopes, the exposition of his true motives and the complete extinction
of his erstwhile honor and glory. His brother, Mírzá Ḍíyá’u’lláh,
died prematurely; Mírzá Áqá Ján, his dupe, followed that same
brother, three years later, to the grave; and Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh,
his chief accomplice, betrayed his cause, published a signed
denunciation of his evil acts, but rejoined him again, only to be
alienated from him in consequence of the scandalous behavior of his
own daughter. Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí’s half-sister,
Furúghíyyih, died of cancer, whilst her husband, Siyyid
‘Alí, passed away from a heart attack before his sons could reach
him, the eldest being subsequently stricken in the prime of life, by
the same malady. Muḥammad-Javád-i-Qazvíní, a notorious
Covenant-breaker, perished miserably. Shu‘á‘u’lláh
who, as witnessed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His Will, had counted
on the murder of the Center of the Covenant, and who had been
despatched to the United States by his father to join forces with
Ibráhím Khayru’lláh, returned crestfallen and
empty-handed from his inglorious mission. Jamál-i-Burújirdí, Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí’s ablest lieutenant in Persia, fell a prey to a
fatal and loathsome disease; Siyyid Mihdíy-i-Dahají, who, betraying
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, joined the Covenant-breakers, died in
obscurity and poverty, followed by his wife and his two sons; Mírzá
Ḥusayn-‘Alíy-i-Jahrumí, Mírzá Ḥusayn-i-Shírázíy-i-Khurṭúmí
and Ḥájí Muḥammad-Ḥusayn-i-Káshání, who represented
the arch-breaker of the Covenant in Persia, India and Egypt, failed
utterly in their missions; whilst the greedy and conceited
Ibráhím-i-Khayru’lláh, who had chosen to uphold the
banner of his rebellion in America for no less than twenty years, and
who had the temerity to denounce, in writing, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
His “false teachings, His misrepresentations of Bahaism, His
dissimulation,” and to stigmatize His visit to America as “a
death-blow” to the “Cause of God,” met his death soon after he
had uttered these denunciations, utterly abandoned and despised by
the entire body of the members of a community, whose founders he
himself had converted to the Faith, and in the very land that bore
witness to the multiplying evidences of the established ascendancy of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Whose authority he had, in his later years,
vowed to uproot.
As to those who had openly espoused the cause of this arch-breaker of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant, or who had secretly sympathized with
him, whilst outwardly supporting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, some
eventually repented and were forgiven; others became disillusioned
and lost their faith entirely; a few apostatized, whilst the rest
dwindled away, leaving him in the end, except for a handful of his
relatives, alone and unsupported. Surviving ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
by almost twenty years, he who had so audaciously affirmed to His
face that he had no assurance he might outlive Him, lived long enough
to witness the utter bankruptcy of his cause, leading meanwhile a
wretched existence within the walls of a Mansion that had once housed
a crowd of his supporters; was denied by the civil authorities, as a
result of the crisis he had after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing
foolishly precipitated, the official custody of his Father’s Tomb;
was compelled, a few years later, to vacate that same Mansion, which,
through his flagrant neglect, had fallen into a dilapidated
condition; was stricken with paralysis which crippled half his body;
lay bedridden in pain for months before he died; and was buried
according to Muslim rites, in the immediate vicinity of a local
Muslim shrine, his grave remaining until the present day devoid of
even a tombstone — a pitiful reminder of the hollowness of the claims
he had advanced, of the depths of infamy to which he had sunk, and of
the severity of the retribution his acts had so richly merited.
Its origins
With the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the first century of the
Bahá’í era, whose inception had synchronized with His birth, had
run more than three quarters of its course. Seventy-seven years
previously the light of the Faith proclaimed by the Báb had risen
above the horizon of Shíráz and flashed across the firmament
of Persia, dispelling the age-long gloom which had enveloped its
people. A blood bath of unusual ferocity, in which government, clergy
and people, heedless of the significance of that light and blind to
its splendor, had jointly participated, had all but extinguished the
radiance of its glory in the land of its birth. Bahá’u’lláh had
at the darkest hour in the fortunes of that Faith been summoned,
while Himself a prisoner in Ṭihrán, to reinvigorate its life, and
been commissioned to fulfil its ultimate purpose. In Baghdád,
upon the termination of the ten-year delay interposed between the
first intimation of that Mission and its Declaration, He had revealed
the Mystery enshrined in the Báb’s embryonic Faith, and disclosed
the fruit which it had yielded. In Adrianople Bahá’u’lláh’s
Message, the promise of the Bábí as well as of all previous
Dispensations, had been proclaimed to mankind, and its challenge
voiced to the rulers of the earth in both the East and the West.
Behind the walls of the prison-fortress of ‘Akká the Bearer of
God’s newborn Revelation had ordained the laws and formulated the
principles that were to constitute the warp and woof of His World
Order. He had, moreover, prior to His ascension, instituted the
Covenant that was to guide and assist in the laying of its
foundations and to safeguard the unity of its builders. Armed with
that peerless and potent Instrument, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His
eldest Son and Center of His Covenant, had erected the standard of
His Father’s Faith in the North American continent, and established
an impregnable basis for its institutions in Western Europe, in the
Far East and in Australia. He had, in His works, Tablets and
addresses, elucidated its principles, interpreted its laws, amplified
its doctrine, and erected the rudimentary institutions of its future
Administrative Order. In Russia He had raised its first House of
Worship, whilst on the slopes of Mt. Carmel He had reared a befitting
mausoleum for its Herald, and deposited His remains therein with His
Own hands. Through His visits to several cities in Europe and the
North American continent He had broadcast Bahá’u’lláh’s
Message to the peoples of the West, and heightened the prestige of
the Cause of God to a degree it had never previously experienced. And
lastly, in the evening of His life, He had through the revelation of
the Tablets of the Divine Plan issued His mandate to the community
which He Himself had raised up, trained and nurtured, a Plan that
must in the years to come enable its members to diffuse the light,
and erect the administrative fabric, of the Faith throughout the five
continents of the globe.
The moment had now arrived for that undying, that world-vitalizing
Spirit that was born in Shíráz, that had been rekindled in
Ṭihrán, that had been fanned into flame in Baghdád and
Adrianople, that had been carried to the West, and was now
illuminating the fringes of five continents, to incarnate itself in
institutions designed to canalize its outspreading energies and
stimulate its growth. The Age that had witnessed the birth and rise
of the Faith had now closed. The Heroic, the Apostolic Age of the
Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, that primitive period in which its
Founders had lived, in which its life had been generated, in which
its greatest heroes had struggled and quaffed the cup of martyrdom,
and its pristine foundations been established — a period whose
splendors no victories in this or any future age, however brilliant,
can rival — had now terminated with the passing of One Whose mission
may be regarded as the link binding the Age in which the seed of the
newborn Message had been incubating and those which are destined to
witness its efflorescence and ultimate fruition.
Character of the Formative Period
The Formative Period, the Iron Age, of that Dispensation was now
beginning, the Age in which the institutions, local, national and
international, of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh were to take shape,
develop and become fully consolidated, in anticipation of the third,
the last, the Golden Age destined to witness the emergence of a
world-embracing Order enshrining the ultimate fruit of God’s latest
Revelation to mankind, a fruit whose maturity must signalize the
establishment of a world civilization and the formal inauguration of
the Kingdom of the Father upon earth as promised by Jesus Christ
Himself.
Nature of the Administrative Order
To this World Order the Báb Himself had, whilst a prisoner in the
mountain fastnesses of Ádhirbáyján, explicitly referred in
His Persian Bayán, the Mother-Book of the Bábí Dispensation, had
announced its advent, and associated it with the name of Bahá’u’lláh,
Whose Mission He Himself had heralded. “Well is it with Him,”
is His remarkable statement in the sixteenth chapter of the third
Váḥid, “who fixeth his gaze upon the Order of Bahá’u’lláh,
and rendereth thanks unto his Lord! For He will assuredly be made
manifest…”
To this same Order Bahá’u’lláh Who, in a
later period, revealed the laws and principles that must govern the
operation of that Order, had thus referred in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the
Mother-Book of His Dispensation: “The world’s equilibrium hath
been upset through the vibrating influence of this Most Great Order.
Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency
of this unique, this wondrous System, the like of which mortal eyes
have never witnessed.”
Its features ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
its great Architect, delineated in His Will and Testament, whilst the
foundations of its rudimentary institutions are now being laid after
Him by His followers in the East and in the West in this, the
Formative Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation.
The last twenty-three years of the first Bahá’í century may thus
be regarded as the initial stage of the Formative Period of the
Faith, an Age of Transition to be identified with the rise and
establishment of the Administrative Order, upon which the
institutions of the future Bahá’í World Commonwealth must needs
be ultimately erected in the Golden Age that must witness the
consummation of the Bahá’í Dispensation. The Charter which called
into being, outlined the features and set in motion the processes of,
this Administrative Order is none other than the Will and Testament
of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His greatest legacy to posterity, the
brightest emanation of His mind and the mightiest instrument forged
to insure the continuity of the three ages which constitute the
component parts of His Father’s Dispensation.
Features of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
The Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh had been instituted solely through
the direct operation of His Will and purpose. The Will and Testament
of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, on the other hand, may be regarded as the
offspring resulting from that mystic intercourse between Him Who had
generated the forces of a God-given Faith and the One Who had been
made its sole Interpreter and was recognized as its perfect Exemplar.
The creative energies unleashed by the Originator of the Law of God
in this age gave birth, through their impact upon the mind of Him Who
had been chosen as its unerring Expounder, to that Instrument, the
vast implications of which the present generation, even after the
lapse of twenty-three years, is still incapable of fully
apprehending. This Instrument can, if we would correctly appraise it,
no more be divorced from the One Who provided the motivating impulse
for its creation than from Him Who directly conceived it. The purpose
of the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation had, as already observed,
been so thoroughly infused into the mind of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
and His Spirit had so profoundly impregnated His being, and their
aims and motives been so completely blended, that to dissociate the
doctrine laid down by the former from the supreme act associated with
the mission of the latter would be tantamount to a repudiation of one
of the most fundamental verities of the Faith.
The Administrative Order which this historic Document has
established, it should be noted, is, by virtue of its origin and
character, unique in the annals of the world’s religious systems.
No Prophet before Bahá’u’lláh, it can be confidently asserted,
not even Muḥammad Whose Book clearly lays down the laws and
ordinances of the Islamic Dispensation, has established,
authoritatively and in writing, anything comparable to the
Administrative Order which the authorized Interpreter of
Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings has instituted, an Order which, by
virtue of the administrative principles which its Author has
formulated, the institutions He has established, and the right of
interpretation with which He has invested its Guardian, must and
will, in a manner unparalleled in any previous religion, safeguard
from schism the Faith from which it has sprung. Nor is the principle
governing its operation similar to that which underlies any system,
whether theocratic or otherwise, which the minds of men have devised
for the government of human institutions. Neither in theory nor in
practice can the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh
be said to conform to any type of democratic government, to any
system of autocracy, to any purely aristocratic order, or to any of
the various theocracies, whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic which
mankind has witnessed in the past. It incorporates within its
structure certain elements which are to be found in each of the three
recognized forms of secular government, is devoid of the defects
which each of them inherently possesses, and blends the salutary
truths which each undoubtedly contains without vitiating in any way
the integrity of the Divine verities on which it is essentially
founded. The hereditary authority which the Guardian of the
Administrative Order is called upon to exercise, and the right of the
interpretation of the Holy Writ solely conferred upon him; the powers
and prerogatives of the Universal House of Justice, possessing the
exclusive right to legislate on matters not explicitly revealed in
the Most Holy Book; the ordinance exempting its members from any
responsibility to those whom they represent, and from the obligation
to conform to their views, convictions or sentiments; the specific
provisions requiring the free and democratic election by the mass of
the faithful of the Body that constitutes the sole legislative organ
in the world-wide Bahá’í community — these are among the features
which combine to set apart the Order identified with the Revelation
of Bahá’u’lláh from any of the existing systems of human
government.
Nor have the enemies who, at the hour of the inception of this
Administrative Order, and in the course of its twenty-three year
existence, both in the East and in the West, from within and from
without, misrepresented its character, or derided and vilified it, or
striven to arrest its march, or contrived to create a breach in the
ranks of its supporters, succeeded in achieving their malevolent
purpose. The strenuous exertions of an ambitious Armenian, who, in
the course of the first years of its establishment in Egypt,
endeavored to supplant it by the “Scientific Society” which in
his short-sightedness he had conceived and was sponsoring, failed
utterly in its purpose. The agitation provoked by a deluded woman who
strove diligently both in the United States and in England to
demonstrate the unauthenticity of the Charter responsible for its
creation, and even to induce the civil authorities of Palestine to
take legal action in the matter — a request which to her great
chagrin was curtly refused — as well as the defection of one of the
earliest pioneers and founders of the Faith in Germany, whom that
same woman had so tragically misled, produced no effect whatsoever.
The volumes which a shameless apostate composed and disseminated,
during that same period in Persia, in his brazen efforts not only to
disrupt that Order but to undermine the very Faith which had
conceived it, proved similarly abortive. The schemes devised by the
remnants of the Covenant-breakers, who immediately the aims and
purposes of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will became known arose,
headed by Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh, to wrest the custodianship of
the holiest shrine in the Bahá’í world from its appointed
Guardian, likewise came to naught and brought further discredit upon
them. The subsequent attacks launched by certain exponents of
Christian orthodoxy, in both Christian and non-Christian lands, with
the object of subverting the foundations, and distorting the
features, of this same Order were powerless to sap the loyalty of its
upholders or to deflect them from their high purpose. Not even the
infamous and insidious machinations of a former secretary of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who, untaught by the retribution that befell
Bahá’u’lláh’s amanuensis, as well as by the fate that
overtook several other secretaries and interpreters of His Master, in
both the East and the West, has arisen, and is still exerting
himself, to pervert the purpose and nullify the essential provisions
of the immortal Document from which that Order derives its authority,
have been able to stay even momentarily the march of its institutions
along the course set for it by its Author, or to create anything that
might, however remotely, resemble a breach in the ranks of its
assured, its wide-awake and stalwart supporters.
The Document establishing that Order, the Charter of a future world
civilization, which may be regarded in some of its features as
supplementary to no less weighty a Book than the Kitáb-i-Aqdas;
signed and sealed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; entirely written with
His own hand; its first section composed during one of the darkest
periods of His incarceration in the prison-fortress of ‘Akká,
proclaims, categorically and unequivocally, the fundamental beliefs
of the followers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh; reveals, in
unmistakable language, the twofold character of the Mission of the
Báb; discloses the full station of the Author of the Bahá’í
Revelation; asserts that “all others are servants unto Him and do
His bidding”; stresses the importance of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas;
establishes the institution of the Guardianship as a hereditary
office and outlines its essential functions; provides the measures
for the election of the International House of Justice, defines its
scope and sets forth its relationship to that Institution; prescribes
the obligations, and emphasizes the responsibilities, of the Hands of
the Cause of God; and extolls the virtues of the indestructible
Covenant established by Bahá’u’lláh. That Document,
furthermore, lauds the courage and constancy of the supporters of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant; expatiates on the sufferings endured
by its appointed Center; recalls the infamous conduct of Mírzá
Yaḥyá and his failure to heed the warnings of the Báb; exposes,
in a series of indictments, the perfidy and rebellion of Mírzá
Muḥammad-‘Alí, and the complicity of his son Shu‘á‘u’lláh
and of his brother Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh; reaffirms their
excommunication, and predicts the frustration of all their hopes;
summons the Afnán (the Báb’s kindred), the Hands of the Cause and
the entire company of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh to arise
unitedly to propagate His Faith, to disperse far and wide, to labor
tirelessly and to follow the heroic example of the Apostles of Jesus
Christ; warns them against the dangers of association with the
Covenant-breakers, and bids them shield the Cause from the assaults
of the insincere and the hypocrite; and counsels them to demonstrate
by their conduct the universality of the Faith they have espoused,
and vindicate its high principles. In that same Document its Author
reveals the significance and purpose of the Ḥuqúqu’lláh (Right
of God), already instituted in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas; enjoins submission
and fidelity towards all monarchs who are just; expresses His longing
for martyrdom, and voices His prayers for the repentance as well as
the forgiveness of His enemies.
Obedient to the summons issued by the Author of so momentous a
Document; conscious of their high calling; galvanized into action by
the shock sustained through the unexpected and sudden removal of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá; guided by the Plan which He, the Architect
of the Administrative Order, had entrusted to their hands; undeterred
by the attacks directed against it by betrayers and enemies, jealous
of its gathering strength and blind to its unique significance, the
members of the widely-scattered Bahá’í communities, in both the
East and the West, arose with clear vision and inflexible
determination to inaugurate the Formative Period of their Faith by
laying the foundations of that world-embracing Administrative system
designed to evolve into a World Order which posterity must acclaim as
the promise and crowning glory of all the Dispensations of the past.
Not content with the erection and consolidation of the administrative
machinery provided for the preservation of the unity and the
efficient conduct of the affairs of a steadily expanding community,
the followers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh resolved, in the
course of the two decades following ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
passing, to assert and demonstrate by their acts the independent
character of that Faith, to enlarge still further its limits and
swell the number of its avowed supporters.
In this triple world-wide effort, it should be noted, the rôle
played by the American Bahá’í community, since the passing of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá until the termination of the first Bahá’í
century, has been such as to lend a tremendous impetus to the
development of the Faith throughout the world, to vindicate the
confidence placed in its members by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself,
and to justify the high praise He bestowed upon them and the fond
hopes He entertained for their future. Indeed so preponderating has
been the influence of its members in both the initiation and the
consolidation of Bahá’í administrative institutions that their
country may well deserve to be recognized as the cradle of the
Administrative Order which Bahá’u’lláh Himself had envisaged
and which the Will of the Center of His Covenant had called into
being.
It should be borne in mind in this connection that the preliminary
steps aiming at the disclosure of the scope and working of this
Administrative Order, which was now to be formally established after
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing, had already been taken by Him,
and even by Bahá’u’lláh in the years preceding His ascension.
The appointment by Him of certain outstanding believers in Persia as
“Hands of the Cause”; the initiation of local Assemblies and
boards of consultation by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in leading Bahá’í
centers in both the East and the West; the formation of the Bahá’í
Temple Unity in the United States of America; the establishment of
local funds for the promotion of Bahá’í activities; the purchase
of property dedicated to the Faith and its future institutions; the
founding of publishing societies for the dissemination of Bahá’í
literature; the erection of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
of the Bahá’í world; the construction of the Báb’s mausoleum
on Mt. Carmel; the institution of hostels for the accommodation of
itinerant teachers and pilgrims — these may be regarded as the
precursors of the institutions which, immediately after the closing
of the Heroic Age of the Faith, were to be permanently and
systematically established throughout the Bahá’í world.
Beginnings of the Administrative Order
No sooner had the provisions of that Divine Charter, delineating the
features of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh
been disclosed to His followers than they set about erecting, upon
the foundations which the lives of the heroes, the saints and martyrs
of that Faith had laid, the first stage of the framework of its
administrative institutions. Conscious of the necessity of
constructing, as a first step, a broad and solid base upon which the
pillars of that mighty structure could subsequently be raised; fully
aware that upon these pillars, when firmly established, the dome, the
final unit crowning the entire edifice, must eventually rest;
undeflected in their course by the crisis which the Covenant-breakers
had precipitated in the Holy Land, or the agitation which the
stirrers of mischief had provoked in Egypt, or the disturbances
resulting from the seizure by the Shí‘ah community of the
House of Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdád, or the growing dangers
confronting the Faith in Russia, or the scorn and ridicule which had
greeted the initial activities of the American Bahá’í community
from certain quarters that had completely misapprehended their
purpose, the pioneer builders of a divinely-conceived Order
undertook, in complete unison, and despite the great diversity in
their outlook, customs and languages, the double task of establishing
and of consolidating their local councils, elected by the rank and
file of the believers, and designed to direct, coordinate and extend
the activities of the followers of a far-flung Faith. In Persia, in
the United States of America, in the Dominion of Canada, in the
British Isles, in France, in Germany, in Austria, in India, in Burma,
in Egypt, in ‘Iráq, in Russian Turkistán, in the Caucasus, in
Australia, in New Zealand, in South Africa, in Turkey, in Syria, in
Palestine, in Bulgaria, in Mexico, in the Philippine Islands, in
Jamaica, in Costa Rica, in Guatemala, in Honduras, in San Salvador,
in Argentina, in Uruguay, in Chile, in Brazil, in Ecuador, in
Colombia, in Paraguay, in Peru, in Alaska, in Cuba, in Haiti, in
Japan, in the Hawaiian Islands, in Tunisia, in Puerto Rico, in
Balúchistán, in Russia, in Transjordan, in Lebanon, and in
Abyssinia such councils, constituting the basis of the rising Order
of a long-persecuted Faith, were gradually established. Designated as
“Spiritual Assemblies” — an appellation that must in the course
of time be replaced by their permanent and more descriptive title of
“Houses of Justice,” bestowed upon them by the Author of the
Bahá’í Revelation; instituted, without any exception, in every
city, town and village where nine or more adult believers are
resident; annually and directly elected, on the first day of the
greatest Bahá’í Festival by all adult believers, men and women
alike; invested with an authority rendering them unanswerable for
their acts and decisions to those who elect them; solemnly pledged to
follow, under all conditions, the dictates of the “Most Great
Justice” that can alone usher in the reign of the “Most Great
Peace” which Bahá’u’lláh has proclaimed and must ultimately
establish; charged with the responsibility of promoting at all times
the best interests of the communities within their jurisdiction, of
familiarizing them with their plans and activities and of inviting
them to offer any recommendations they might wish to make; cognizant
of their no less vital task of demonstrating, through association
with all liberal and humanitarian movements, the universality and
comprehensiveness of their Faith; dissociated entirely from all
sectarian organizations, whether religious or secular; assisted by
committees annually appointed by, and directly responsible to, them,
to each of which a particular branch of Bahá’í activity is
assigned for study and action; supported by local funds to which all
believers voluntarily contribute; these Assemblies, the
representatives and custodians of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh,
numbering, at the present time, several hundred, and whose membership
is drawn from the diversified races, creeds and classes constituting
the world-wide Bahá’í community, have, in the course of the last
two decades, abundantly demonstrated, by virtue of their
achievements, their right to be regarded as the chief sinews of
Bahá’í society, as well as the ultimate foundation of its
administrative structure.
Local Assemblies
“The Lord hath ordained,”
is Bahá’u’lláh’s
injunction in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, “that in every city a House of
Justice be established, wherein shall gather counsellors to the
number of Bahá (9), and should it exceed this number, it doth
not matter. It behoveth them to be the trusted ones of the Merciful
among men, and to regard themselves as the guardians appointed of God
for all that dwell on earth. It is incumbent upon them to take
counsel together, and to have regard for the interests of the
servants of God, for His sake, even as they regard their own
interests, and to choose that which is meet and seemly.”
“These
Spiritual Assemblies,”
is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
testimony, in a Tablet addressed to an American believer, “are
aided by the Spirit of God. Their defender is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
Over them He spreadeth His Wings. What bounty is there greater than
this?”
“These Spiritual Assemblies,”
He, in that
same Tablet has declared, “are shining lamps and heavenly
gardens, from which the fragrances of holiness are diffused over all
regions, and the lights of knowledge are shed abroad over all created
things. From them the spirit of life streameth in every direction.
They, indeed, are the potent sources of the progress of man, at all
times and under all conditions.”
Establishing beyond any doubt
their God-given authority, He has written: “It is incumbent upon
every one not to take any step without consulting the Spiritual
Assembly, and all must assuredly obey with heart and soul its
bidding, and be submissive unto it, that things may be properly
ordered and well arranged.”
“If after discussion,”
He, furthermore has written, “a decision be carried unanimously,
well and good; but if, the Lord forbid, differences of opinion should
arise, a majority of voices must prevail.”
National Assemblies
Having established the structure of their local Assemblies — the base
of the edifice which the Architect of the Administrative Order of the
Faith of Bahá’u’lláh had directed them to erect — His
disciples, in both the East and the West, unhesitatingly embarked on
the next and more difficult stage, of their high enterprise. In
countries where the local Bahá’í communities had sufficiently
advanced in number and in influence measures were taken for the
initiation of National Assemblies, the pivots round which all
national undertakings must revolve. Designated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
in His Will as the “Secondary Houses of Justice,”
they
constitute the electoral bodies in the formation of the International
House of Justice, and are empowered to direct, unify, coordinate and
stimulate the activities of individuals as well as local Assemblies
within their jurisdiction. Resting on the broad base of organized
local communities, themselves pillars sustaining the institution
which must be regarded as the apex of the Bahá’í Administrative
Order, these Assemblies are elected, according to the principle of
proportional representation, by delegates representative of Bahá’í
local communities assembled at Convention during the period of the
Riḍván Festival; are possessed of the necessary authority to
enable them to insure the harmonious and efficient development of
Bahá’í activity within their respective spheres; are freed from
all direct responsibility for their policies and decisions to their
electorates; are charged with the sacred duty of consulting the
views, of inviting the recommendations and of securing the confidence
and cooperation of the delegates and of acquainting them with their
plans, problems and actions; and are supported by the resources of
national funds to which all ranks of the faithful are urged to
contribute. Instituted in the United States of America (1925) (the
National Assembly superseding in that country the institution of
Bahá’í Temple Unity formed during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
ministry), in the British Isles (1923), in Germany (1923), in Egypt
(1924), in ‘Iráq (1931), in India (1923), in Persia (1934) and in
Australia (1934); their election renewed annually by delegates whose
number has been fixed, according to national requirements, at 9, 19,
95, or 171 (9 times 19), these national bodies have through their
emergence signalized the birth of a new epoch in the Formative Age of
the Faith, and marked a further stage in the evolution, the
unification and consolidation of a continually expanding community.
Aided by national committees responsible to and chosen by them,
without discrimination, from among the entire body of the believers
within their jurisdiction, and to each of which a particular sphere
of Bahá’í service is allocated, these Bahá’í National
Assemblies have, as the scope of their activities steadily enlarged,
proved themselves, through the spirit of discipline which they have
inculcated and through their uncompromising adherence to principles
which have enabled them to rise above all prejudices of race, nation,
class and color, capable of administering, in a remarkable fashion,
the multiplying activities of a newly-consolidated Faith.
National Committees
Nor have the national committees themselves been less energetic and
devoted in the discharge of their respective functions. In the
defense of the Faith’s vital interests, in the exposition of its
doctrine; in the dissemination of its literature; in the
consolidation of its finances; in the organization of its teaching
force; in the furtherance of the solidarity of its component parts;
in the purchase of its historic sites; in the preservation of its
sacred records, treasures and relics; in its contacts with the
various institutions of the society of which it forms a part; in the
education of its youth; in the training of its children; in the
improvement of the status of its women adherents in the East; the
members of these diversified agencies, operating under the aegis of
the elected national representatives of the Bahá’í community,
have amply demonstrated their capacity to promote effectively its
vital and manifold interests. The mere enumeration of the national
committees which, originating mostly in the West and functioning with
exemplary efficiency in the United States and Canada, now carry on
their activities with a vigor and a unity of purpose which sharply
contrast with the effete institutions of a moribund civilization,
would suffice to reveal the scope of these auxiliary institutions
which an evolving Administrative Order, still in the secondary stage
of its development, has set in motion: The Teaching Committee, the
Regional Teaching Committees; the Inter-America Committee; the
Publishing Committee; the Race Unity Committee; the Youth Committee;
the Reviewing Committee; The Temple Maintenance Committee; the Temple
Program Committee; the Temple Guides Committee; the Temple Librarian
and Sales Committee; the Boys’ and Girls’ Service Committees; the
Child Education Committee; the Women’s Progress, Teaching, and
Program Committees; the Legal Committee; the Archives and History
Committee; the Census Committee; the Bahá’í Exhibits Committee;
the Bahá’í News Committee; the Bahá’í News Service Committee;
the Braille Transcriptions Committee; the Contacts Committee; the
Service Committee; the Editorial Committee; the Index Committee; the
Library Committee; the Radio Committee; the Accountant Committee; the
Annual Souvenir Committee; the Bahá’í World Editorial Committee;
the Study Outline Committee; the International Auxiliary Language
Committee; the Institute of Bahá’í Education Committee; the World
Order Magazine Committee; the Bahá’í Public Relations Committee;
the Bahá’í Schools Committee; the Summer Schools Committee; the
International School Committee; the Pamphlet Literature Committee;
the Bahá’í Cemetery Committee; the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds
Committee; the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár Committee; the
Assembly Development Committee; the National History Committee; the
Miscellaneous Materials Committee; the Free Literature Committee; the
Translation Committee; the Cataloguing Tablets Committee; the Editing
Tablets Committee; the Properties Committee; the Adjustments
Committee; the Publicity Committee; the East and West Committee; the
Welfare Committee; the Transcription of Tablets Committee; the
Traveling Teachers Committee; the Bahá’í Education Committee; the
Holy Sites Committee; the Children’s Savings Bank Committee.
Bahá’í Constitutions
The establishment of local and national Assemblies and the subsequent
formation of local and national committees, acting as necessary
adjuncts to the elected representatives of Bahá’í communities in
both the East and the West, however remarkable in themselves, were
but a prelude to a series of undertakings on the part of the newly
formed National Assemblies, which have contributed in no small
measure to the unification of the Bahá’í world community and the
consolidation of its Administrative Order. The initial step taken in
that direction was the drafting and adoption of a Bahá’í National
constitution, first framed and promulgated by the elected
representatives of the American Bahá’í Community in 1927, the
text of which has since, with slight variations suited to national
requirements, been translated into Arabic, German and Persian, and
constitutes, at the present time, the charter of the National
Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’ís of the United States and
Canada, of the British Isles, of Germany, of Persia, of ‘Iráq, of
India and Burma, of Egypt and the Súdán and of Australia and New
Zealand. Heralding the formulation of the constitution of the future
Bahá’í World Community; submitted for the consideration of all
local Assemblies and ratified by the entire body of the recognized
believers in countries possessing national Assemblies, this national
constitution has been supplemented by a similar document, containing
the by-laws of Bahá’í local assemblies, first drafted by the New
York Bahá’í community in November, 1931, and accepted as a
pattern for all local Bahá’í constitutions. The text of this
national constitution comprises a Declaration of Trust, whose
articles set forth the character and objects of the national Bahá’í
community, establish the functions, designate the central office, and
describe the official seal, of the body of its elected
representatives, as well as a set of by-laws which define the status,
the mode of election, the powers and duties of both local and
national Assemblies, describe the relation of the National Assembly
to the International House of Justice as well as to local Assemblies
and individual believers, outline the rights and obligations of the
National Convention and its relation to the National Assembly,
disclose the character of Bahá’í elections, and lay down the
requirements of voting membership in all Bahá’í communities.
Incorporation of Bahá’í Assemblies
The framing of these constitutions, both local and national,
identical to all intents and purposes in their provisions, provided
the necessary foundation for the legal incorporation of these
administrative institutions in accordance with civil statutes
controlling religious or commercial bodies. Giving these Assemblies a
legal standing, this incorporation greatly consolidated their power
and enlarged their capacity, and in this regard the achievement of
the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United
States and Canada and the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of
New York again set an example worthy of emulation by their sister
Assemblies in both the East and the West. The incorporation of the
American National Spiritual Assembly as a voluntary Trust, a species
of corporation recognized under the common law, enabling it to enter
into contract, hold property and receive bequests by virtue of a
certificate issued in May, 1929, under the seal of the Department of
State in Washington and bearing the signature of the Secretary of
State, Henry L. Stimson, was followed by the adoption of similar
legal measures resulting in the successive incorporation of the
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of India and Burma, in
January, 1933, in Lahore, in the state of Punjab, according to the
provisions of the Societies Registration Act of 1860; of the National
Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Egypt and the Sudan, in
December, 1934, as certified by the Mixed Court in Cairo; of the
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Australia and New
Zealand, in January, 1938, as witnessed by the Deputy Registrar at
the General Registry Office for the state of South Australia; and
more recently of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís
of the British Isles, in August, 1939, as an unlimited non-profit
company, under the Companies Act, 1929, and certified by the
Assistant Registrar of Companies in the City of London.
Parallel with the legal incorporation of these National Assemblies a
far larger number of Bahá’í local Assemblies were similarly
incorporated, following the example set by the Chicago Bahá’í
Assembly in February, 1932, in countries as far apart as the United
States of America, India, Mexico, Germany, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Burma, Costa Rica, Balúchistán and the Hawaiian
Islands. The Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’ís of Esslingen in
Germany, of Mexico City in Mexico, of San José in Costa Rica, of
Sydney and Adelaide in Australia, of Auckland in New Zealand, of
Delhi, Bombay, Karachi, Poona, Calcutta, Secunderabad, Bangalore,
Vellore, Ahmedabad, Serampore, Andheri and Baroda in India, of Tuetta
in Balúchistán, of Rangoon, Mandalay and Daidanow-Kalazoo in
Burma, of Montreal and Vancouver in Canada, of Honolulu in the
Hawaiian Islands, and of Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Boston,
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Kenosha, Teaneck, Racine, Detroit,
Cleveland, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Winnetka,
Phoenix, Columbus, Lima, Portland, Jersey City, Wilmette, Peoria,
Seattle, Binghamton, Helena, Richmond Highlands, Miami, Pasadena,
Oakland, Indianapolis, St. Paul, Berkeley, Urbana, Springfield and
Flint in the United States of America — all these succeeded,
gradually and after submitting the text of almost identical Bahá’í
local constitutions to the civil authorities in their respective
states or provinces, in constituting themselves into societies and
corporations recognized by law, and protected by the civil statutes
operating in their respective countries.
Bahá’í Endowments
Just as the formulation of Bahá’í constitutions had provided the
foundation for the incorporation of Bahá’í Spiritual Assemblies,
so did the recognition accorded by local and national authorities to
the elected representatives of Bahá’í communities pave the way
for the establishment of national and local Bahá’í endowments — a
historic undertaking which, as had been the case with previous
achievements of far-reaching importance, the American Bahá’í
Community was the first to initiate. In most cases these endowments,
owing to their religious character, have been exempted from both
government and municipal taxes, as a result of representations made
by the incorporated Bahá’í bodies to the civil authorities,
though the value of the properties thus exempted has, in more than
one country, amounted to a considerable sum.
The institution of the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds
In the United States of America the national endowments of the Faith,
already representing one and three-quarter million dollars of assets,
and established through a series of Indentures of Trust, created in
1928, 1929, 1935, 1938, 1939, 1941 and 1942 by the National Spiritual
Assembly in that country, acting as Trustees of the American Bahá’í
Community, now include the land and structure of the
Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, and the caretaker’s cottage in
Wilmette, Ill.; the adjoining Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds (Bahá’í
National Headquarters) and its supplementary administrative office;
the Inn, the Fellowship House, the Bahá’í Hall, the Arts and
Crafts Studio, a farm, a number of cottages, several parcels of land,
including the holding on Monsalvat, blessed by the footsteps of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Green Acre, in the state of Maine; Bosch
House, the Bahá’í Hall, a fruit orchard, the Redwood Grove, a
dormitory and Ranch Buildings in Geyserville, Calif.; Wilhelm House,
Evergreen Cabin, a pine grove and seven lots with buildings at West
Englewood, N.J., the scene of the memorable Unity Feast given by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in June, 1912, to the Bahá’ís of the New
York Metropolitan district; Wilson House, blessed by His presence,
and land in Malden, Mass.; Mathews House and Ranch Buildings in Pine
Valley, Colo.; land in Muskegon, Mich., and a cemetery lot in
Portsmouth, N.H.
Of even greater importance, and in their aggregate far surpassing in
value the national endowments of the American Bahá’í community,
though their title-deeds are, owing to the inability of the Persian
Bahá’í community to incorporate its national and local
assemblies, held in trust by individuals, are the assets which the
Faith now possesses in the land of its origin. To the House of the
Báb in Shíráz and the ancestral Home of Bahá’u’lláh
in Tákur, Mázindarán, already in the possession of the community
in the days of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry, have, since His
ascension, been added extensive properties, in the outskirts of the
capital, situated on the slopes of Mt. Alburz, overlooking the native
city of Bahá’u’lláh, including a farm, a garden and vineyard,
comprising an area of over three million and a half square meters,
preserved as the future site of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
in Persia. Other acquisitions that have greatly extended the range of
Bahá’í endowments in that country include the House in which
Bahá’u’lláh was born in Ṭihrán; several buildings adjoining
the House of the Báb in Shíráz, including the house owned
by His maternal uncle; the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds in Ṭihrán; the
shop occupied by the Báb during the years He was a merchant in
Búshihr; a quarter of the village of Chihríq, where
He was confined; the house of Ḥájí Mírzá Jání, where He
tarried on His way to Tabríz; the public bath used by Him in Shíráz
and some adjacent houses; half of the house owned by Vaḥíd in
Nayríz and part of the house owned by Ḥujjat in Zanján; the three
gardens rented by Bahá’u’lláh in the hamlet of Badasht;
the burial-place of Quddús in Bárfurúsh; the house of
Kalantar in Ṭihrán, the scene of Ṭáhirih’s confinement; the
public bath visited by the Báb when in Urúmíyyih, Ádhirbáyján;
the house owned by Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alíy-i-Núrí, where the Báb’s
remains had been concealed; the Bábíyyih and the house owned by
Mullá Ḥusayn in Mashhad; the residence of the
Sulṭánu’sh-Shuhadá (King of Martyrs) and of the
Maḥbúbu’sh-Shuhadá (Beloved of Martyrs) in
Iṣfahán, as well as a considerable number of sites and houses,
including burial-places, associated with the heroes and martyrs of
the Faith. These holdings which, with very few exceptions, have been
recently acquired in Persia, are now being preserved and yearly
augmented, and, whenever necessary, carefully restored, through the
assiduous efforts of a specially appointed national committee, acting
under the constant and general supervision of the elected
representatives of the Persian believers.
Nor should mention be omitted of the varied and multiplying national
assets which, ever since the inception of the Administrative Order of
the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, have been steadily acquired in other
countries such as India, Burma, the British Isles, Germany, ‘Iráq,
Egypt, Australia, Transjordan and Syria. Among these may be specially
mentioned the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds of the Bahá’ís of ‘Iráq,
the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds of the Bahá’ís of Egypt, the
Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds of the Bahá’ís of India, the
Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds of the Bahá’ís of Australia, the Bahá’í
Home in Esslingen, the Publishing Trust of the Bahá’ís of the
British Isles, the Bahá’í Pilgrim House in Baghdád, and
the Bahá’í Cemeteries established in the capitals of Persia,
Egypt and Turkistán. Whether in the form of land, schools,
administrative headquarters, secretariats, libraries, cemeteries,
hostels or publishing companies, these widely scattered assets,
partly registered in the name of incorporated National Assemblies,
and partly held in trust by individual recognized believers, have
contributed their share to the uninterrupted expansion of national
Bahá’í endowments in recent years as well as to the consolidation
of their foundations. Of vital importance, though less notable in
significance, have been, moreover, the local endowments which have
supplemented the national assets of the Faith and which, in
consequence of the incorporation of Bahá’í local Assemblies, have
been legally established and safeguarded in various countries in both
the East and the West. Particularly in Persia these holdings, whether
in the form of land, administrative buildings, schools or other
institutions, have greatly enriched and widened the scope of the
local endowments of the world-wide Bahá’í community.
Simultaneous with the establishment and incorporation of local and
national Bahá’í Assemblies, with the formation of their
respective committees, the formulation of national and local Bahá’í
constitutions and the founding of Bahá’í endowments, undertakings
of great institutional significance were initiated by these newly
founded Assemblies, among which the institution of the
Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds — the seat of the Bahá’í National Assembly
and pivot of all Bahá’í administrative activity in future — must
rank as one of the most important. Originating first in Persia, now
universally known by its official and distinctive title signifying
“the Sacred Fold,” marking a notable advance in the evolution of
a process whose beginnings may be traced to the clandestine
gatherings held at times underground and in the dead of night, by the
persecuted followers of the Faith in that country, this institution,
still in the early stages of its development, has already lent its
share to the consolidation of the internal functions of the organic
Bahá’í community, and provided a further visible evidence of its
steady growth and rising power. Complementary in its functions to
those of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár — an edifice
exclusively reserved for Bahá’í worship — this institution,
whether local or national, will, as its component parts, such as the
Secretariat, the Treasury, the Archives, the Library, the Publishing
Office, the Assembly Hall, the Council Chamber, the Pilgrims’
Hostel, are brought together and made jointly to operate in one spot,
be increasingly regarded as the focus of all Bahá’í
administrative activity, and symbolize, in a befitting manner, the
ideal of service animating the Bahá’í community in its relation
alike to the Faith and to mankind in general.
From the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, ordained as a house of
worship by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the
representatives of Bahá’í communities, both local and national,
together with the members of their respective committees, will, as
they gather daily within its walls at the hour of dawn, derive the
necessary inspiration that will enable them to discharge, in the
course of their day-to-day exertions in the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds — the
scene of their administrative activities — their duties and
responsibilities as befits the chosen stewards of His Faith.
Already on the shores of Lake Michigan, in the outskirts of the first
Bahá’í center established in the American continent and under the
shadow of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the West;
in the capital city of Persia, the cradle of the Faith; in the
vicinity of the Most Great House in Baghdád; in the city of
‘Ishqábád, adjoining the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
of the Bahá’í world; in the capital of Egypt, the foremost center
of both the Arab and Islamic worlds; in Delhi, the capital city of
India and even in Sydney in far-off Australia, initial steps have
been taken which must eventually culminate in the establishment, in
all their splendor and power, of the national administrative seats of
the Bahá’í communities established in these countries.
Locally, moreover, in the above-mentioned countries, as well as in
several others, the preliminary measures for the establishment of
this institution, in the form of a house, either owned or rented by
the local Bahá’í community, have been taken, foremost among them
being the numerous administrative buildings which, in various
provinces of Persia, the believers have, despite the disabilities
from which they suffer, succeeded in either purchasing or
constructing.
Summer Schools
Equally important as a factor in the evolution of the Administrative
Order has been the remarkable progress achieved, particularly in the
United States of America, by the institution of the summer schools
designed to foster the spirit of fellowship in a distinctly Bahá’í
atmosphere, to afford the necessary training for Bahá’í teachers,
and to provide facilities for the study of the history and teachings
of the Faith, and for a better understanding of its relation to other
religions and to human society in general.
Established in three regional centers, for the three major divisions
of the North American continent, in Geyserville, in the Californian
hills (1927), at Green Acre, situated on the banks of the Piscataqua
in the state of Maine (1929), and at Louhelen Ranch near Davison,
Michigan (1931), and recently supplemented by the International
School founded at Pine Valley, Colorado Springs, dedicated to the
training of Bahá’í teachers wishing to serve in other lands and
especially in Latin America, these three embryonic Bahá’í
educational institutions have, through a steady expansion of their
programs, set an example worthy of emulation by other Bahá’í
communities in both the East and the West. Through the intensive
study of Bahá’í Scriptures and of the early history of the Faith;
through the organization of courses on the teachings and history of
Islám; through conferences for the promotion of inter-racial amity;
through laboratory courses designed to familiarize the participants
with the processes of the Bahá’í Administrative Order; through
special sessions devoted to Youth and child training; through classes
in public speaking; through lectures on Comparative Religion; through
group discussion on the manifold aspects of the Faith; through the
establishment of libraries; through teaching classes; through courses
on Bahá’í ethics and on Latin America; through the introduction
of winter school sessions; through forums and devotional gatherings;
through plays and pageants; through picnics and other recreational
activities, these schools, open to Bahá’ís and non-Bahá’ís
alike, have set so noble an example as to inspire other Bahá’í
communities in Persia, in the British Isles, in Germany, in
Australia, in New Zealand, in India, in ‘Iráq and in Egypt to
undertake the initial measures designed to enable them to build along
the same lines institutions that bid fair to evolve into the Bahá’í
universities of the future.
Youth and other activities
Among other factors contributing to the expansion and establishment
of the Administrative Order may be mentioned the organized activities
of the Bahá’í Youth, already much advanced in Persia and in the
United States of America, and launched more recently in India, in the
British Isles, in Germany, in ‘Iráq, in Egypt, in Australia, in
Bulgaria, in the Hawaiian Islands, in Hungary and in Havana. These
activities comprise annual world-wide Bahá’í Youth Symposiums,
Youth sessions at Bahá’í summer schools, youth bulletins and
magazines, an international correspondence Bureau, facilities for the
registration of young people desiring to join the Faith, the
publication of outlines and references for the study of the teachings
and the organization of a Bahá’í study group as an official
university activity in a leading American university. They include,
moreover, “study days” held in Bahá’í homes and centers,
classes for the study of Esperanto and other languages, the
organization of Bahá’í libraries, the opening of reading rooms,
the production of Bahá’í plays and pageants, the holding of
oratorical contests, the education of orphans, the organization of
classes in public speaking, the holding of gatherings to perpetuate
the memory of historical Bahá’í personalities, inter-group
regional conferences and youth sessions held in connection with
Bahá’í annual conventions.
Still other factors promoting the development of that Order and
contributing to its consolidation have been the systematic
institution of the Nineteen Day Feast, functioning in most Bahá’í
communities in East and West, with its threefold emphasis on the
devotional, the administrative and the social aspects of Bahá’í
community life; the initiation of activities designed to prepare a
census of Bahá’í children, and provide for them laboratory
courses, prayer books and elementary literature, and the formulation
and publication of a body of authoritative statements on the
non-political character of the Faith, on membership in non-Bahá’í
religious organizations, on methods of teaching, on the Bahá’í
attitude towards war, on the institutions of the Annual Convention,
of the Bahá’í Spiritual Assembly, of the Nineteen Day Feast and
of the National Fund. Reference should, moreover, be made to the
establishment of National Archives for the authentication, the
collection, the translation, the cataloguing and the preservation of
the Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and
for the preservation of sacred relics and historical documents; to
the verification and transcription of the original Tablets of the
Báb, of Bahá’u’lláh and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the
possession of Oriental believers; to the compilation of a detailed
history of the Faith since its inception until the present day; to
the opening of a Bahá’í International Bureau in Geneva; to the
holding of Bahá’í district conventions; to the purchase of
historic sites; to the establishment of Bahá’í memorial
libraries, and to the initiation of a flourishing children’s
Savings Bank in Persia.
Contact established with humanitarian organizations and government authorities
Nor should mention be omitted of the participation, whether official
or non-official, of representatives of these newly founded national
Bahá’í communities in the activities and proceedings of a great
variety of congresses, associations, conventions and conferences,
held in various countries of Europe, Asia and America for the
promotion of religious unity, peace, education, international
cooperation, inter-racial amity and other humanitarian purposes. With
organizations such as the Conference of some Living Religions within
the British Empire, held in London in 1924 and the World Fellowship
of Faiths held in that same city in 1936; with the Universal
Esperanto Congresses held annually in various capitals of Europe;
with the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation; with the Century of
Progress Exhibition held in Chicago in 1933; with the World’s Fair
held in New York in 1938 and 1939; with the Golden Gate International
Exposition held in San Francisco in 1939; with the First Convention
of the Religious Congress held in Calcutta; with the Second All-India
Cultural Conference convened in that same city; with the All-Faiths’
League Convention in Indore; with the Arya Samaj and the Brahmo Samaj
Conferences as well as those of the Theosophical Society and the
All-Asian Women’s Conference, held in various cities of India; with
the World Council of Youth; with the Eastern Women’s Congress in
Ṭihrán; with the Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference in Honolulu;
with the Women’s International League for Peace and with the
Peoples Conference at Buenos Aires in Argentina — with these and
others, relationships have, in one form or another, been cultivated
which have served the twofold purpose of demonstrating the
universality and comprehensiveness of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh
and of forging vital and enduring links between them and the
far-flung agencies of its Administrative Order.
Consolidation of Bahá’í institutions in the Holy Land
Nor should we ignore or underestimate the contacts established
between these same agencies and some of the highest governmental
authorities, in both the East and the West, as well as with the heads
of Islám in Persia, and with the League of Nations, and with even
royalty itself for the purpose of defending the rights, or of
presenting the literature, or of setting forth the aims and purposes
of the followers of the Faith in their unremitting efforts to
champion the cause of an infant Administrative Order. The
communications addressed by the members of the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada — the
champion builders of that Order — to the Palestine High Commissioner
for the restitution of the keys of the Tomb of Bahá’u’lláh to
its custodian; to the Sháh of Persia, on four occasions,
pleading for justice on behalf of their persecuted brethren within
his domains; to the Persian Prime Minister on that same subject; to
Queen Marie of Rumania, expressing gratitude for her historic
tributes to the Bahá’í Faith; to the Heads of Islám in Persia,
appealing for harmony and peace among religions; to King Feisal of
‘Iráq for the purpose of insuring the security of the Most Great
House in Baghdád; to the Soviet Authorities on behalf of the
Bahá’í communities in Russia; to the German authorities regarding
the disabilities suffered by their German brethren; to the Egyptian
Government concerning the emancipation of their co-religionists from
the yoke of Islamic orthodoxy; to the Persian Cabinet in connection
with the closing of Persian Bahá’í educational institutions; to
the State Department of the United States Government and the Turkish
Ambassador in Washington and the Turkish Cabinet in Ankara, in
defense of the interests of the Faith in Turkey; to that same State
Department in order to facilitate the transfer of the remains of Lua
Getsinger from the Protestant Cemetery in Cairo to the first Bahá’í
burial-ground established in Egypt; to the Persian Minister in
Washington regarding the mission of Keith Ransom-Kehler; to the King
of Egypt with accompanying Bahá’í literature; to the Government
of the United States and the Canadian Government, setting forth the
Bahá’í teachings on Universal Peace; to the Rumanian Minister in
Washington on behalf of the American Bahá’ís, on the occasion of
the death of Queen Marie of Rumania; and to President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, acquainting him with Bahá’u’lláh’s summons issued
in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas to the Presidents of the American Republics and
with certain prayers revealed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — such
communications constitute in themselves a notable and illuminating
chapter in the history of the unfoldment of the Bahá’í
Administrative Order.
To these must be added the communications addressed from the world
center of the Faith as well as by Bahá’í national and local
assemblies, whether telegraphically or in writing, to the Palestine
High Commissioner, pleading for the delivery of the keys of the Tomb
of Bahá’u’lláh to its original keeper; the appeals made by
Bahá’í centers in East and West to the ‘Iráqí authorities for
the restoration of the House of Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdád;
the subsequent appeal made to the British Secretary of State for the
Colonies, following the verdict of the Baghdád Court of
Appeals in that connection; the messages despatched to the League of
Nations on behalf of Bahá’í communities in the East and in the
West, in appreciation of the official pronouncement of the Council of
the League in favor of the claims presented by the Bahá’í
petitioners, as well as several letters exchanged between the
International Center of the Faith, on the one hand, and that
archetype of Bahá’í teachers, Martha Root, on the other, with
Queen Marie of Rumania, following the publication of her historic
appreciations of the Faith, and the messages of sympathy addressed to
Queen Marie of Yugoslavia, on behalf of the world-wide Bahá’í
Community, on the occasion of the passing of her mother, and to the
Duchess of Kent following the tragic death of her husband.
Nor should we fail to make special mention of the petition forwarded
by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of ‘Iráq to
the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, as a result of the
seizure of Bahá’u’lláh’s house in Baghdád, or of the
written messages sent to King Ghází I of ‘Iráq by that
same Assembly, after the death of his father and on the occasion of
his marriage, or of its condolences conveyed in writing to the
present Regent of ‘Iráq at the time of the sudden death of that
King, or of the communications of the National Spiritual Assembly of
the Bahá’ís of Egypt submitted to the Egyptian Prime Minister,
the Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of Justice, following
the verdict of the Muslim ecclesiastical court in Egypt, or of the
letters addressed by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís
of Persia to the Sháh and to the Persian Cabinet in
connection with the closing of Bahá’í schools and the ban imposed
on Bahá’í literature in that country. Mention should, moreover,
be made of the written messages despatched by the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Persia to the King of Rumania and the
Royal Family on the occasion of the death of his mother, Queen Marie,
as well as to the Turkish Ambassador in Ṭihrán enclosing the
contribution of the Persian believers for the sufferers of the
earthquake in Turkey; of Martha Root’s letters to the late
President Von Hindenburg and to Dr. Streseman, the German Foreign
Minister, accompanying the presentation to them of Bahá’í
literature; of Keith Ransom-Kehler’s seven successive petitions
addressed to the Sháh of Persia, and of her numerous
communications to various ministers and high dignitaries of the
realm, during her memorable visit to that land.
Collateral with these first stirrings of the Bahá’í
Administrative Order, and synchronizing with the emergence of
National Bahá’í communities and with the institution of their
administrative, educational, and teaching agencies, the mighty
process set in motion in the Holy Land, the heart and nerve-center of
that Administrative Order, on the memorable occasions when
Bahá’u’lláh revealed the Tablet of Carmel and visited the
future site of the Báb’s sepulcher, was irresistibly unfolding.
That process had received a tremendous impetus through the purchase
of that site, shortly after Bahá’u’lláh’s ascension, through
the subsequent transfer of the Báb’s remains from Ṭihrán to
‘Akká, through the construction of that sepulcher during the most
distressful years of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s incarceration, and
lastly through the permanent interment of those remains in the heart
of Mt. Carmel, through the establishment of a pilgrim house in the
immediate vicinity of that sepulcher, and the selection of the future
site of the first Bahá’í educational institution on that
mountain.
Profiting from the freedom accorded the world center of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh, ever since the ignominious defeat of the decrepit
Ottoman empire during the war of 1914–18, the forces released
through the inception of the stupendous Plan conceived by Him could
now flow unchecked, under the beneficent influence of a sympathetic
régime, into channels designed to disclose to the world at large the
potencies with which that Plan had been endowed. The interment of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself within a vault of the Báb’s
mausoleum, enhancing still further the sacredness of that mountain;
the installment of an electric plant, the first of its kind
established in the city of Haifa, flooding with illumination the
Grave of One Who, in His own words, had been denied even “a lighted
lamp” in His fortress-prison in Ádhirbáyján; the
construction of three additional chambers adjoining His sepulcher,
thereby completing ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s plan for the first
unit of that Edifice; the vast extension, despite the machinations of
the Covenant-breakers, of the properties surrounding that
resting-place, sweeping from the ridge of Carmel down to the Templar
colony nestling at its foot, and representing assets estimated at no
less than four hundred thousand pounds, together with the acquisition
of four tracts of land, dedicated to the Bahá’í Shrines, and
situated in the plain of ‘Akká to the north, in the district of
Beersheba to the south, and in the valley of the Jordan to the east,
amounting to approximately six hundred acres; the opening of a series
of terraces which, as designed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, are to
provide a direct approach to the Báb’s Tomb from the city lying
under its shadow; the beautification of its precincts through the
laying out of parks and gardens, open daily to the public, and
attracting tourists and residents alike to its gates — these may be
regarded as the initial evidences of the marvelous expansion of the
international institutions and endowments of the Faith at its world
center. Of particular significance, moreover, has been the exemption
granted by the Palestine High Commissioner to the entire area of land
surrounding and dedicated to the Shrine of the Báb, to the school
property and the archives in its vicinity, to the Western
pilgrim-house situated in its neighborhood, and to such historic
sites as the Mansion in Bahjí, the House of Bahá’u’lláh in
‘Akká, and the garden of Riḍván to the east of that city; the
establishment, as a result of two formal applications submitted to
the civil authorities, of the Palestine Branches of the American and
Indian National Spiritual Assemblies, as recognized religious
societies in Palestine (to be followed, for purposes of internal
consolidation, by a similar incorporation of the branches of other
National Spiritual Assemblies throughout the Bahá’í world); and
the transfer to the Branch of the American National Spiritual
Assembly, through a series of no less than thirty transactions, of
properties dedicated to the Tomb of the Báb, and approximating in
their aggregate fifty thousand square meters, the majority of the
title-deeds of which bear the signature of the son of the
Arch-breaker of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant in his capacity as
Registrar of lands in Haifa.
Equally significant has been the founding on Mt. Carmel of two
international Archives, the one adjoining the shrine of the Báb, the
other in the immediate vicinity of the resting-place of the Greatest
Holy Leaf, where, for the first time in Bahá’í history, priceless
treasures, hitherto scattered and often hidden for safekeeping, have
been collected and are now displayed to visiting pilgrims. These
treasures include portraits of both the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh;
personal relics such as the hair, the dust and garments of the Báb;
the locks and blood of Bahá’u’lláh and such articles as His
pen-case, His garments, His brocaded tájes (head dresses), the
kashkúl of His Sulaymáníyyih days, His watch and His
Qur’án; manuscripts and Tablets of inestimable value, some of them
illuminated, such as part of the Hidden Words written in
Bahá’u’lláh’s own hand, the Persian Bayán, in the
handwriting of Siyyid Ḥusayn, the Báb’s amanuensis, the original
Tablets to the Letters of the Living penned by the Báb, and the
manuscript of “Some Answered Questions.” This precious
collection, moreover, includes objects and effects associated with
‘Abdu’l-Bahá; the blood-stained garment of the Purest
Branch, the ring of Quddús, the sword of Mullá Ḥusayn, the seals
of the Vazír, the father of Bahá’u’lláh, the brooch presented
by the Queen of Rumania to Martha Root, the originals of the Queen’s
letters to her and to others, and of her tributes to the Faith, as
well as no less than twenty volumes of prayers and Tablets revealed
by the Founders of the Faith, authenticated and transcribed by Bahá’í
Assemblies throughout the Orient, and supplementing the vast
collection of their published writings.
Moreover, as a further testimony to the majestic unfoldment and
progressive consolidation of the stupendous undertaking launched by
Bahá’u’lláh on that holy mountain, may be mentioned the
selection of a portion of the school property situated in the
precincts of the Shrine of the Báb as a permanent resting-place for
the Greatest Holy Leaf, the “well-beloved”
sister of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the “Leaf that hath sprung”
from
the “Pre-existent Root,”
the “fragrance”
of
Bahá’u’lláh’s “shining robe,”
elevated by Him to a
“station such as none other woman hath surpassed,”
and
comparable in rank to those immortal heroines such as Sarah, Ásíyih,
the Virgin Mary, Fáṭimih and Ṭáhirih, each of whom has outshone
every member of her sex in previous Dispensations. And lastly, there
should be mentioned, as a further evidence of the blessings flowing
from the Divine Plan, the transfer, a few years later, to that same
hallowed spot, after a separation in death of above half a century,
and notwithstanding the protests voiced by the brother and lieutenant
of the arch-breaker of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant, of the remains
of the Purest Branch, the martyred son of Bahá’u’lláh, “created
of the light of Bahá,”
the “Trust of God”
and His
“Treasure”
in the Holy Land, and offered up by his Father
as a “ransom”
for the regeneration of the world and the
unification of its peoples. To this same burial-ground, and on the
same day the remains of the Purest Branch were interred, was
transferred the body of his mother, the saintly Navváb, she to whose
dire afflictions, as attested by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in a Tablet,
the 54th chapter of the Book of Isaiah has, in its entirety, borne
witness, whose “Husband,”
in the words of that Prophet, is
“the Lord of Hosts,”
whose “seed shall inherit the
Gentiles,”
and whom Bahá’u’lláh in His Tablet, has
destined to be “His consort in every one of His worlds.”
The conjunction of these three resting-places, under the shadow of
the Báb’s own Tomb, embosomed in the heart of Carmel, facing the
snow-white city across the bay of ‘Akká, the Qiblih of the Bahá’í
world, set in a garden of exquisite beauty, reinforces, if we would
correctly estimate its significance, the spiritual potencies of a
spot, designated by Bahá’u’lláh Himself the seat of God’s
throne. It marks, too, a further milestone in the road leading
eventually to the establishment of that permanent world
Administrative Center of the future Bahá’í Commonwealth, destined
never to be separated from, and to function in the proximity of, the
Spiritual Center of that Faith, in a land already revered and held
sacred alike by the adherents of three of the world’s outstanding
religious systems.
Erection of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in Wilmette, Ill.
Scarcely less significant has been the erection of the superstructure
and the completion of the exterior ornamentation of the first
Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the West, the noblest of the
exploits which have immortalized the services of the American Bahá’í
community to the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh. Consummated through the
agency of an efficiently functioning and newly established
Administrative Order, this enterprise has itself immensely enhanced
the prestige, consolidated the strength and expanded the subsidiary
institutions of the community that made its building possible.
Conceived forty-one years ago; originating with the petition
spontaneously addressed, in March 1903 to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá by
the “House of Spirituality” of the Bahá’ís of Chicago — the
first Bahá’í center established in the Western world — the
members of which, inspired by the example set by the builders of the
Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of ‘Ishqábád, had
appealed for permission to construct a similar Temple in America;
blessed by His approval and high commendation in a Tablet revealed by
Him in June of that same year; launched by the delegates of various
American Assemblies, assembled in Chicago in November, 1907, for the
purpose of choosing the site of the Temple; established on a national
basis through a religious corporation known as the “Bahá’í
Temple Unity,” which was incorporated shortly after the first
American Bahá’í Convention held in that same city in March, 1909;
honored through the dedication ceremony presided over by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Himself when visiting that site in May, 1912, this enterprise — the
crowning achievement of the Administrative Order of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh in the first Bahá’í century — had, ever since
that memorable occasion, been progressing intermittently until the
time when the foundations of that Order having been firmly laid in
the North American continent the American Bahá’í community was in
a position to utilize the instruments which it had forged for the
efficient prosecution of its task.
At the 1914 American Bahá’í Convention the purchase of the Temple
property was completed. The 1920 Convention, held in New York, having
been previously directed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to select the
design of that Temple, chose from among a number of designs
competitively submitted to it that of Louis J. Bourgeois, a
French-Canadian architect, a selection that was later confirmed by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself. The contracts for the sinking of the
nine great caissons supporting the central portion of the building,
extending to rock at a depth of 120 feet below the ground level, and
for the construction of the basement structure, were successively
awarded in December, 1920 and August, 1921. In August, 1930, in spite
of the prevailing economic crisis, and during a period of
unemployment unparalleled in American history, another contract, with
twenty-four additional sub-contracts, for the erection of the
superstructure was placed, and the work completed by May 1, 1931, on
which day the first devotional service in the new structure was
celebrated, coinciding with the 19th anniversary of the dedication of
the grounds by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The ornamentation of the dome
was started in June, 1932 and finished in January, 1934. The
ornamentation of the clerestory was completed in July, 1935, and that
of the gallery unit below it in November, 1938. The mainstory
ornamentation was, despite the outbreak of the present war,
undertaken in April, 1940, and completed in July, 1942; whilst the
eighteen circular steps were placed in position by December, 1942,
seventeen months in advance of the centenary celebration of the
Faith, by which time the exterior of the Temple was scheduled to be
finished, and forty years after the petition of the Chicago believers
had been submitted to and granted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
This unique edifice, the first fruit of a slowly maturing
Administrative Order, the noblest structure reared in the first
Bahá’í century, and the symbol and precursor of a future world
civilization, is situated in the heart of the North American
continent, on the western shore of Lake Michigan, and is surrounded
by its own grounds comprising a little less than seven acres. It has
been financed, at cost of over a million dollars, by the American
Bahá’í community, assisted at times by voluntary contributions of
recognized believers in East and West, of Christian, of Muslim, of
Jewish, of Zoroastrian, of Hindu and Buddhist extraction. It has been
associated, in its initial phase, with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and
in the concluding stages of its construction with the memory of the
Greatest Holy Leaf, the Purest Branch and their mother. The structure
itself is a pure white nonagonal building, of original and unique
design, rising from a flight of white stairs encircling its base; and
surmounted by a majestic and beautifully proportioned dome, bearing
nine tapering symmetrically placed ribs of decorative as well as
structural significance, which soar to its apex and finally merge
into a common unit pointing skyward. Its framework is constructed of
structural steel enclosed in concrete, the material of its
ornamentation consisting of a combination of crystalline quartz,
opaque quartz and white Portland cement, producing a composition
clear in texture, hard and enduring as stone, impervious to the
elements, and cast into a design as delicate as lace. It soars 191
feet from the floor of its basement to the culmination of the ribs,
clasping the hemispherical dome which is forty-nine feet high, with
an external diameter of ninety feet, and one-third of the surface of
which is perforated to admit light during the day and emit light at
night. It is buttressed by pylons forty-five feet in height, and
bears above its nine entrances, one of which faces ‘Akká, nine
selected quotations from the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, as well
as the Greatest Name in the center of each of the arches over its
doors. It is consecrated exclusively to worship, devoid of all
ceremony and ritual, is provided with an auditorium which can seat
1600 people, and is to be supplemented by accessory institutions of
social service to be established in its vicinity, such as an
orphanage, a hospital, a dispensary for the poor, a home for the
incapacitated, a hostel for travelers and a college for the study of
arts and sciences. It had already, long before its construction,
evoked, and is now increasingly evoking, though its interior
ornamentation is as yet unbegun, such interest and comment, in the
public press, in technical journals and in magazines, of both the
United States and other countries, as to justify the hopes and
expectations entertained for it by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Its model
exhibited at Art centers, galleries, state fairs and national
expositions — among which may be mentioned the Century of Progress
Exhibition, held in Chicago in 1933, where no less than ten thousand
people, passing through the Hall of Religions, must have viewed it
every day — its replica forming a part of the permanent exhibit of
the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago; its doors now thronged
by visitors from far and near, whose number, during the period from
June, 1932 to October, 1941 has exceeded 130,000 people, representing
almost every country in the world, this great “Silent Teacher” of
the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, it may be confidently asserted, has
contributed to the diffusion of the knowledge of His Faith and
teachings in a measure which no other single agency, operating within
the framework of its Administrative Order, has ever remotely
approached.
“When the foundation of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
is laid in America,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself has
predicted, “and that Divine Edifice is completed, a most
wonderful and thrilling motion will appear in the world of existence
… From that point of light the spirit of teaching, spreading the
Cause of God and promoting the teachings of God, will permeate to all
parts of the world.”
“Out of this Mashriqu’l-Adhkár,”
He has affirmed in the Tablets of the Divine Plan, “without
doubt, thousands of Mashriqu’l-Adhkárs
will be born.”
“It marks,”
He, furthermore, has
written, “the inception of the Kingdom of God on earth.”
And again: “It is the manifest Standard waving in the center of
that great continent.”
“Thousands of Mashriqu’l-Adhkárs,”
He, when dedicating the grounds of the Temple, declared, “…will
be built in the East and in the West, but this, being the first
erected in the Occident, has great importance.”
“This
organization of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár,”
He, referring to that edifice, has moreover stated, “will be a
model for the coming centuries, and will hold the station of the
mother.”
“Its inception,” the architect of the Temple has himself
testified, “was not from man, for, as musicians, artists, poets
receive their inspiration from another realm, so the Temple’s
architect, through all his years of labor, was ever conscious that
Bahá’u’lláh was the creator of this building to be erected to
His glory.” “Into this new design,” he, furthermore, has
written, “…is woven, in symbolic form, the great Bahá’í
teaching of unity — the unity of all religions and of all mankind.
There are combinations of mathematical lines, symbolizing those of
the universe, and in their intricate merging of circle into circle,
and circle within circle, we visualize the merging of all the
religions into one.” And again: “A circle of steps, eighteen in
all, will surround the structure on the outside, and lead to the
auditorium floor. These eighteen steps represent the eighteen first
disciples of the Báb, and the door to which they lead stands for the
Báb Himself.” “As the essence of the pure original teachings of
the historic religions was the same … in the Bahá’í Temple is
used a composite architecture, expressing the essence in the line of
each of the great architectural styles, harmonizing them into one
whole.”
“It is the first new idea in architecture since the 13th century,”
declared a distinguished architect, H. Van Buren Magonigle, President
of the Architectural League, after gazing upon a plaster model of the
Temple on exhibition in the Engineering Societies Building in New
York, in June 1920. “The Architect,” he, moreover, has stated,
“has conceived a Temple of Light in which structure, as usually
understood, is to be concealed, visible support eliminated as far as
possible, and the whole fabric to take on the airy substance of a
dream. It is a lacy envelope enshrining an idea, the idea of light, a
shelter of cobweb interposed between earth and sky, struck through
and through with light — light which shall partly consume the forms
and make of it a thing of faery.”
“In the geometric forms of the ornamentation,” a writer in the
well-known publication “Architectural Record” has written,
“covering the columns and surrounding windows and doors of the
Temple, one deciphers all the religious symbols of the world. Here
are the swastika, the circle, the cross, the triangle, the double
triangle or six pointed star (Solomon’s seal) — but more than
this — the noble symbol of the spiritual orb … the five pointed
star; the Greek Cross, the Roman cross, and supreme above all, the
wonderful nine pointed star, figured in the structure of the Temple
itself, and appearing again and again in its ornamentation as
significant of the spiritual glory in the world today.”
“The greatest creation since the Gothic period,” is the testimony
of George Grey Barnard, one of the most widely-known sculptors in the
United States of America, “and the most beautiful I have ever
seen.”
“This is a new creation,” Prof. Luigi Quaglino, ex-professor of
Architecture from Turin declared, after viewing the model, “which
will revolutionize architecture in the world, and it is the most
beautiful I have ever seen. Without doubt it will have a lasting page
in history. It is a revelation from another world.”
“Americans,” wrote Sherwin Cody, in the magazine section of the
New York Times, of the model of the Temple, when exhibited in the
Kevorkian Gallery in New York, “will have to pause long enough to
find that an artist has wrought into this building the conception of
a Religious League of Nations.” And lastly, this tribute paid to
the features of, and the ideals embodied in, this Temple — the most
sacred House of Worship in the Bahá’í world, whether of the
present or of the future — by Dr. Rexford Newcomb, Dean of the
College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois: “This
‘Temple of Light’ opens upon the terrain of human experience nine
great doorways which beckon men and women of every race and clime, of
every faith and conviction, of every condition of freedom or
servitude to enter here into a recognition of that kinship and
brotherhood without which the modern world will be able to make
little further progress … The dome, pointed in form, aiming as
assuredly as did the aspiring lines of the medieval cathedrals toward
higher and better things, achieves not only through its symbolism but
also through its structural propriety and sheer loveliness of form, a
beauty not matched by any domical structure since the construction of
Michelangelo’s dome on the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome.”
The institutions signalizing the rise and establishment of the
Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh did not (as
the history of their unfoldment abundantly demonstrates) remain
immune against the assaults and persecutions to which the Faith
itself, the progenitor of that Order, had, for over seventy years,
been subjected, and from which it is still suffering. The emergence
of a firmly knit community, advancing the claims of a world religion,
with ramifications spread over five continents representing a great
variety of races, languages, classes and religious traditions;
provided with a literature scattered over the surface of the earth,
and expounding in several languages its doctrine; clear-visioned,
unafraid, alert and determined to achieve at whatever sacrifice its
goal; organically united through the machinery of a divinely
appointed Administrative Order; non-sectarian, non-political,
faithful to its civil obligations yet supranational in character;
tenacious in its adherence to the laws and ordinances regulating its
community life — the emergence of such a community, in a world
steeped in prejudice, worshipping false gods, torn by intestine
divisions, and blindly clinging to obsolescent doctrines and
defective standards, could not but precipitate, sooner or later,
crises no less grave, though less spectacular, than the persecutions
which, in an earlier age, had raged around the Founders of that
community and their early disciples. Assailed by enemies within, who
have either rebelled against its God-given authority or wholly
renounced their faith, or by adversaries from without, whether
political or ecclesiastical, the infant Order identified with this
community has, since its inception, and throughout every stage in its
evolution, felt severely the impact of the forces which have sought
in vain to strangle its budding life or to obscure its purpose.
To these attacks, destined to grow in scope and severity, and to
arouse a tumult that will reverberate throughout the world,
‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself had already, at the time the outlines
of that Divine order were being delineated by Him in His Will,
significantly alluded: “Erelong shall the clamor of the
multitude throughout Africa, throughout America, the cry of the
European and of the Turk, the groaning of India and China, be heard
from far and near. One and all, they shall arise with all their power
to resist His Cause. Then shall the knights of the Lord …
reinforced by the legions of the Covenant, arise and manifest the
truth of the verse: ‘Behold the confusion that hath befallen the
tribes of the defeated!’”
Already in more than one country the trustees and elected
representatives of this indestructible world-embracing Order have
been summoned by civil authorities or ecclesiastical courts, ignorant
of its claims, or hostile to its principles or fearful of its rising
strength, to defend its cause, or to renounce their allegiance to it,
or to curtail the range of its operation. Already an aggressive hand,
unmindful of God’s avenging wrath, has been stretched out against
its sanctuaries and edifices. Already its defenders and champions
have, in some countries, been declared heretics, or stigmatized as
subverters of law and order, or branded as visionaries, unpatriotic
and careless of their civic duties and responsibilities, or
peremptorily ordered to suspend their activities and dissolve their
institutions.
Seizure of the keys of the Tomb of Bahá’u’lláh by the Covenant-breakers
In the Holy Land, the world seat of this System, where its heart
pulsates, where the dust of its Founders reposes, where the processes
disclosing its purposes, energizing its life and shaping its destiny
all originate, there fell, at the very hour of its inception, the
first blow which served to proclaim to high and low alike the
solidity of the foundations on which it has been established. The
Covenant-breakers, now dwindled to a mere handful, instigated by
Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, the Arch-rebel, whose dormant hopes had
been awakened by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sudden ascension, and
headed by the arrogant Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh, seized forcibly the
keys of the Tomb of Bahá’u’lláh, expelled its keeper, the
brave-souled Abu’l-Qásim-i-Khurásání, and demanded that
their chief be recognized by the authorities as the legal custodian
of that Shrine. Unadmonished by their abject failure, as witnessed by
the firm action of the Palestine authorities, who, after prolonged
investigations, instructed the British officer in ‘Akká to deliver
the keys into the hands of that same keeper, they resorted to other
methods in the hope of creating a cleavage in the ranks of the
bereaved yet resolute disciples of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and of
ultimately undermining the foundations of the institutions His
followers were laboring to erect. Through their mischievous
misrepresentations of the ideals animating the builders of the Bahá’í
Administrative Order; through the maintenance, though not on its
original scale, of a subversive correspondence with individuals whose
loyalty they hoped they could sap; through deliberate distortions of
the truth in their contact with officials and notables whom they
could approach; through attempts, made through bribery and
intimidation, to purchase a part of the Mansion of Bahá’u’lláh;
through efforts directed at preventing the acquisition by the Bahá’í
community of certain properties situated in the vicinity of the Tomb
of the Báb, and at frustrating the design to consolidate the
foundation of some of these properties by transferring their
title-deeds to incorporated Bahá’í assemblies, they continued to
labor intermittently for several years until the extinction of the
life of the Arch-breaker of the Covenant himself virtually sealed
their doom.
The evacuation of the Mansion of Bahá’u’lláh by these
Covenant-breakers, after their unchallenged occupancy of it since His
ascension, a Mansion which, through their gross neglect, had fallen
into a sad state of disrepair; its subsequent complete restoration,
fulfilling a long cherished desire of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; its
illumination through an electric plant installed by an American
believer for that purpose; the refurnishing of all its rooms after it
had been completely denuded by its former occupants of all the
precious relics it contained, with the exception of a single
candlestick in the room where Bahá’u’lláh had ascended; the
collection within its walls of Bahá’í historic documents, of
relics and of over five thousand volumes of Bahá’í literature, in
no less than forty languages; the extension to it of the exemption
from government taxes, already granted to other Bahá’í
institutions and properties in ‘Akká and on Mt. Carmel; and
finally, its conversion from a private residence to a center of
pilgrimage visited by Bahá’ís and non-Bahá’ís alike — these
served to further dash the hopes of those who were still desperately
striving to extinguish the light of the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh.
Furthermore, the success later achieved in purchasing and
safeguarding the area forming the precincts of the resting-place of
the Báb on Mt. Carmel, and the transfer of the title-deeds of some
of these properties to the legally constituted Palestine Branch of
the American Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly, no less than the
circumstances attending the death of the one who had been the prime
mover of mischief throughout ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry,
demonstrated to these enemies the futility of their efforts and the
hopelessness of their cause.
Seizure of the House of Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdád by the Shí‘ahs
Of a more serious nature, and productive of still greater
repercussions, was the unlawful seizure by the Shí‘ahs of
‘Iráq, at about the same time that the keys of the Tomb of
Bahá’u’lláh were wrested by the Covenant-breakers from its
keeper, of yet another Bahá’í Shrine, the House occupied by
Bahá’u’lláh for well nigh the whole period of His exile in
‘Iráq, which had been acquired by Him, and later had been ordained
as a center of pilgrimage, and had continued in the unbroken and
undisputed possession of His followers ever since His departure from
Baghdád. This crisis, originating about a year prior to
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ascension, and precipitated by the
measures which, after the change of régime in ‘Iráq, had,
according to His instructions, been taken for the reconstruction of
that House, acquired as it developed a steadily widening measure of
publicity. It became the object of the consideration of successive
tribunals, first of the local Shí‘ah Ja‘faríyyih court
in Baghdád, second of the Peace court, then the court of
First Instance, then of the court of Appeal in ‘Iráq, and finally
of the League of Nations, the greatest international body yet come
into existence, and empowered to exercise supervision and control
over all Mandated Territories. Though as yet unresolved through a
combination of causes, religious as well as political, it has already
remarkably fulfilled Bahá’u’lláh’s own prediction, and will,
in its own appointed time, as the means for its solution are
providentially created, fulfill the high destiny ordained for it by
Him in His Tablets. Long before its seizure by fanatical enemies, who
had no conceivable claim to it whatever, He had prophesied that “it
shall be so abased in the days to come as to cause tears to flow from
every discerning eye.”
The Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Baghdád,
deprived of the use of that sacred property through an adverse
decision by a majority of the court of Appeal, which had reversed the
verdict of the lower court and awarded the property to the Shí‘ahs,
and aroused by subsequent action of the Shí‘ahs, soon after
the execution of the judgment of that court, in converting the
building into waqf property (pious foundation), designating it
“Ḥusayníyyih,” with the purpose of consolidating their gain,
realized the futility of the three years of negotiations they had
been conducting with the civil authorities in Baghdád for the
righting of the wrong inflicted upon them. In their capacity as the
national representatives of the Bahá’ís of ‘Iráq, they,
therefore, on September 11, 1928, through the High Commissioner for
‘Iráq and in conformity with the provisions of Art. 22 of the
Covenant of the League of Nations, approached the League’s
Permanent Mandates Commission, charged with the supervision of the
administration of all Mandated Territories, and presented a petition
that was accepted and approved by that body in November, 1928. A
memorandum submitted, in connection with that petition, to that same
Commission, by the Mandatory Power unequivocally stated that the
Shí‘ahs had “no conceivable claim whatever” to the
House, that the decision of the judge of the Ja‘faríyyih court was
“obviously wrong,” “unjust” and “undoubtedly actuated by
religious prejudice,” that the subsequent ejectment of the Bahá’ís
was “illegal,” that the action of the authorities had been
“highly irregular,” and that the verdict of the Court of Appeal
was suspected of not being “uninfluenced by political
consideration.”
“The Commission,” states the Report submitted by it to the
Council of the League, and published in the Minutes of the 14th
session of the Permanent Mandates Commission, held in Geneva in the
fall of 1928, and subsequently translated into Arabic and published
in ‘Iráq, “draws the Council’s attention to the considerations
and conclusions suggested to it by an examination of the petition …
It recommends that the Council should ask the British Government to
make representations to the ‘Iráq Government with a view to the
immediate redress of the denial of justice from which the petitioners
have suffered.”
The British accredited representative present at the sessions of the
Commission, furthermore, stated that “the Mandatory Power had
recognized that the Bahá’ís had suffered an injustice,” whilst
allusion was made, in the course of that session, to the fact that
the action of the Shí‘ahs constituted a breach of the
constitution and the Organic Law of ‘Iráq. The Finnish
representative, moreover, in his report to the Council, declared that
this “injustice must be attributed solely to religious passion,”
and asked that “the petitioner’s wrongs should be redressed.”
The Council of the League, on its part, having considered this report
as well as the joint observations and conclusions of the Commission,
unanimously adopted, on March 4, 1929, a resolution, subsequently
translated and published in the newspapers of Baghdád,
directing the Mandatory Power “to make representations to the
Government of ‘Iráq with a view to the immediate redress of the
injustice suffered by the Petitioners.” It instructed, accordingly,
the Secretary General to bring to the notice of the Mandatory Power,
as well as to the petitioners concerned, the conclusions arrived at
by the Commission, an instruction which was duly transmitted by the
British Government through its High Commissioner to the ‘Iráq
Government.
A letter dated January 12, 1931, written on behalf of the British
Foreign Minister, Mr. Arthur Henderson, addressed to the League
Secretariat, stated that the conclusions reached by the Council had
“received the most careful consideration by the Government of
‘Iráq,” who had “finally decided to set up a special committee
… to consider the views expressed by the Bahá’í community in
respect of certain houses in Baghdád, and to formulate
recommendations for an equitable settlement of this question.” That
letter, moreover, pointed out that the committee had submitted its
report in August, 1930, that it had been accepted by the government,
that the Bahá’í community had “accepted in principle” its
recommendations, and that the authorities in Baghdád had
directed that “detailed plans and estimates shall be prepared with
a view to carrying these recommendations into effect during the
coming financial year.”
No need to dwell on the subsequent history of this momentous case, on
the long-drawn out negotiations, the delays and complications that
ensued; on the consultations, “over a hundred” in number, in
which the king, his ministers and advisers took part; on the
expressions of “regret,” of “surprise” and of “anxiety”
placed on record at successive sessions of the Mandates Commission
held in Geneva in 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932 and 1933; on the
condemnation by its members of the “spirit of intolerance”
animating the Shí‘ah community, of the “partiality” of
the ‘Iráqí courts, of the “weakness” of the civil authorities
and of the “religious passion at the bottom of this injustice”;
on their testimony to the “extremely conciliatory disposition” of
the petitioners, on their “doubt” regarding the adequacy of the
proposals, and on their recognition of the “serious” character of
the situation that had been created, of the “flagrant denial of
justice” which the Bahá’ís had suffered, and of the “moral
debt” which the ‘Iráq Government had contracted, a debt which,
whatever the changes in her status as a nation, it was her bounden
duty to discharge.
Nor does it seem necessary to expatiate on the unfortunate
consequences of the untimely death of both the British High
Commissioner and the ‘Iráqí Prime Minister; on the admission of
‘Iráq as a member of the League, and the consequent termination of
the mandate held by Great Britain; on the tragic and unexpected death
of the King himself; on the difficulties raised owing to the
existence of a town planning scheme; on the written assurance
conveyed to the High Commissioner by the acting Premier in his letter
of January, 1932; on the pledge given by the King, prior to his
death, in the presence of the foreign minister, in February, 1933,
that the House would be expropriated, and the necessary sum would be
appropriated in the spring of the ensuing year; on the categorical
statement made by that same foreign minister that the Prime Minister
had given the necessary assurances that the promise already made by
the acting Premier would be redeemed; or on the positive statements
made by that same Foreign Minister and his colleague, the Minister of
Finance, when representing their country during the sessions of the
League Assembly held in Geneva, that the promise given by their late
King would be fully honored.
Suffice it to say that, despite these interminable delays, protests
and evasions, and the manifest failure of the Authorities concerned
to implement the recommendations made by both the Council of the
League and the Permanent Mandates Commission, the publicity achieved
for the Faith by this memorable litigation, and the defense of its
cause — the cause of truth and justice — by the world’s highest
tribunal, have been such as to excite the wonder of its friends and
to fill with consternation its enemies. Few episodes, if any, since
the birth of the Formative Age of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh,
have given rise to repercussions in high places comparable to the
effect produced on governments and chancelleries by this violent and
unprovoked assault directed by its inveterate enemies against one of
its holiest sanctuaries.
“Grieve not, O House of God,”
Bahá’u’lláh Himself
has significantly written, “if the veil of thy sanctity be rent
asunder by the infidels. God hath, in the world of creation, adorned
thee with the jewel of His remembrance. Such an ornament no man can,
at any time, profane. Towards thee the eyes of thy Lord shall, under
all conditions, remain directed.”
“In the fullness of
time,”
He, in another passage, referring to that same House,
has prophesied, “the Lord shall, by the power of truth, exalt it
in the eyes of all men. He shall cause it to become the Standard of
His Kingdom, the Shrine round which will circle the concourse of the
faithful.”
To the bold onslaught made by the breakers of the Covenant of
Bahá’u’lláh in their concerted efforts to secure the
custodianship of His holy Tomb, to the arbitrary seizure of His holy
House in Baghdád by the Shí‘ah community of ‘Iráq,
was to be added, a few years later, yet another grievous assault
launched by a still more powerful adversary, directed against the
very fabric of the Administrative Order as established by two
long-flourishing Bahá’í communities of the East, culminating in
the virtual disruption of these communities and the seizure of the
first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the Bahá’í world and
of the few accessory institutions already reared about it.
The courage, the fervor and the spiritual vitality evinced by these
communities; the highly organized state of their administrative
institutions; the facilities provided for the religious education and
training of their youth; the conversion of a number of broad-minded
Russian citizens, imbued with ideas closely related to the tenets of
the Faith; the growing realization of the implications of its
principles, with their emphasis on religion, on the sanctity of
family life, on the institution of private property, and their
repudiation of all discrimination between classes and of the doctrine
of the absolute equality of men — these combined to excite the
suspicion, and later to arouse the fierce antagonism, of the ruling
authorities, and to precipitate one of the gravest crises in the
history of the first Bahá’í century.
Persecution of the Faith and suppression of its institutions in Russia
As the crisis developed and spread to even the outlying centers of
both Turkistán and the Caucasus it resulted gradually in the
imposition of restrictions limiting the freedom of these communities,
in the interrogation and arrest of their elected representatives, in
the dissolution of their local Assemblies and their respective
committees in Moscow, in ‘Ishqábád, in Bákú and in other
localities in the above-mentioned provinces and in the suspension of
all Bahá’í youth activities. It even led to the closing of Bahá’í
schools, kindergartens, libraries and public reading-rooms, to the
interception of all communication with foreign Bahá’í centers, to
the confiscation of Bahá’í printing presses, books and documents,
to the prohibition of all teaching activities, to the abrogation of
the Bahá’í constitution, to the abolition of all national and
local funds and to the ban placed on the attendance of non-believers
at Bahá’í meetings.
In the middle of 1928 the law expropriating religious edifices was
applied to the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of ‘Ishqábád.
The use of this edifice as a house of worship, however, was
continued, under a five-year lease, which was renewed by the local
authorities in 1933, for a similar period. In 1938 the situation in
both Turkistán and the Caucasus rapidly deteriorated, leading to the
imprisonment of over five hundred believers — many of whom died — as
well as a number of women, and the confiscation of their property,
followed by the exile of several prominent members of these
communities to Siberia, the polar forests and other places in the
vicinity of the Arctic Ocean, the subsequent deportation of most of
the remnants of these communities to Persia, on account of their
Persian nationality, and lastly, the complete expropriation of the
Temple itself and its conversion into an art gallery.
Repressive measures against Bahá’í institutions in Germany
In Germany, likewise, the rise and establishment of the
Administrative Order of the Faith, to whose expansion and
consolidation the German believers were distinctively and
increasingly contributing, was soon followed by repressive measures,
which, though less grievous than the afflictions suffered by the
Bahá’ís of Turkistán and the Caucasus, amounted to the virtual
cessation, in the years immediately preceding the present conflict,
of all organized Bahá’í activity throughout the length and
breadth of that land. The public teaching of the Faith, with its
unconcealed emphasis on peace and universality, and its repudiation
of racialism, was officially forbidden; Bahá’í Assemblies and
their committees were dissolved; the holding of Bahá’í
conventions was interdicted; the Archives of the National Spiritual
Assembly were seized; the summer school was abolished and the
publication of all Bahá’í literature was suspended.
Restrictions imposed on Bahá’í institutions in Persia
In Persia, moreover, apart from sporadic outbreaks of persecution in
such places as Shíráz, Ábádih, Ardibíl, Iṣfahán, and
in certain districts of Ádhirbáyján and Khurásán — outbreaks
greatly reduced in number and violence, owing to the marked decline
in the fortunes of the erstwhile powerful Shí‘ah
ecclesiastics — the institutions of a newly-established and as yet
unconsolidated Administrative Order were subjected by the civil
authorities, in both the capital and the provinces, to restrictions
designed to circumscribe their scope, to fetter their freedom and
undermine their foundations.
The gradual and wholly unexpected emergence from obscurity of a
firmly-welded national community, schooled in adversity and unbroken
in spirit, with centers established in every province of that
country, in spite of the successive waves of inhuman persecution
which had, for three quarters of a century, swept over and had all
but engulfed it; the determination of its members to diffuse the
spirit and principles of their Faith, broadcast its literature,
enforce its laws and ordinances, penalize those who would transgress
them, maintain a steady intercourse with their fellow-believers in
foreign lands, and erect the edifices and institutions of its
Administrative Order, could not but arouse the apprehensions and the
hostility of those placed in authority, who either misunderstood the
aims of that community, or were bent upon stifling its life. The
insistence of its members, while obedient in all matters of a purely
administrative character to the civil statutes of their country, on
adhering to the fundamental spiritual principles, precepts and laws
revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, requiring them, among other things, to
hold fast to truthfulness, not to dissimulate their faith, observe
the ordinances prescribed for marriage and divorce, and suspend all
manner of work on the Holy Days ordained by Him, brought them, sooner
or later, into conflict with a régime which, owing to its formal
recognition of Islám as the state religion of Persia, refused to
extend any recognition to those whom the official exponents of that
religion had already condemned as heretics.
The closing of all schools belonging to the Bahá’í community in
that country, as a direct consequence of the refusal of the
representatives of that community to permit official Bahá’í
institutions, owned and entirely controlled by them, to transgress
the clearly revealed law requiring the suspension of work on Bahá’í
Holy Days; the rejection of all Bahá’í marriage certificates and
the refusal to register them at government License Bureaus; the ban
placed on the printing and circulation of all Bahá’í literature,
as well as on its entry into the country; the seizure in various
centers of Bahá’í documents, books and relics; the closing, in
some of the provinces of the Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds, and the
confiscation in some localities of their furniture; the prohibition
of all Bahá’í demonstrations, conferences and conventions; the
strict censorship imposed on, and often the non-delivery of,
communications between Bahá’í centers in Persia and between these
centers and Bahá’í communities in foreign lands; the withholding
of good-record certificates from loyal and law-abiding citizens on
the ground of their avowed adherence to the Bahá’í Faith; the
dismissal of Government employees, the demotion or discharge of army
officers, the arrest, the interrogation, the imprisonment of, and the
imposition of fines and other punishments upon, a number of believers
who refused either to cast aside the moral obligation of adhering to
the spiritual principles of their Faith, or to act in any manner that
would conflict with its universal and non-political character — all
these may be regarded as the initial attempts made in the country
whose soil had already been imbued with the blood of countless Bahá’í
martyrs, to resist the rise, and frustrate the struggle for the
emancipation, of a nascent Administrative Order, whose very roots
have sucked their strength from such heroic sacrifice.
While the initial steps aiming at the erection of the framework of
the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh were being
simultaneously undertaken by His followers in the East and in the
West, a fierce attack was launched in an obscure village in Egypt on
a handful of believers, who were trying to establish there one of the
primary institutions of that Order — an attack which, viewed in the
perspective of history, will be acclaimed by future generations as a
landmark not only in the Formative Period of the Faith but in the
history of the first Bahá’í century. Indeed, the sequel to this
assault may be said to have opened a new chapter in the evolution of
the Faith itself, an evolution which, carrying it through the
successive stages of repression, of emancipation, of recognition as
an independent Revelation, and as a state religion, must lead to the
establishment of the Bahá’í state and culminate in the emergence
of the Bahá’í World Commonwealth.
Formal divorce of the Faith from Islám in Egypt
Originating in a country which can rightly boast of being the
acknowledged center of both the Arab and Muslim worlds; precipitated
by the action, taken on their own initiative, by the ecclesiastical
representatives of the largest communion in Islám; the direct
outcome of a series of disturbances instigated by some of the members
of that communion designed to suppress the activities of certain
followers of the Faith who had held a clerical rank among them, this
momentous development in the fortunes of a struggling community has
directly contributed, to a considerable degree, to the consolidation
and the enhancement of the prestige of the Administrative Order which
that community had begun to erect. It will, moreover, as its
repercussions are more widely spread to other Islamic countries, and
its vast significance is more clearly apprehended by the adherents of
both Christianity and Islám, hasten the termination of the period of
transition through which the Faith, now in the formative stage of its
growth, is passing.
It was in the village of Kawmu’ṣ-Ṣa‘áyidih, in the district
of Beba, of the province of Beni Suef in Upper Egypt, that, as a
result of the religious fanaticism which the formation of a Bahá’í
assembly had kindled in the breast of the headman of that village,
and of the grave accusations made by him to both the District Police
Officer and the Governor of the province — accusations which aroused
the Muḥammadans to such a pitch of excitement as to cause them to
perpetrate shameful acts against their victims — that action was
initiated by the notary of the village, in his capacity as a
religious plaintiff authorized by the Ministry of Justice, against
three Bahá’í residents of that village, demanding that their
Muslim wives be divorced from them on the grounds that their husbands
had abandoned Islám after their legal marriage as Muslims.
The Opinion and Judgment of the Appellate religious court of Beba,
delivered on May 10, 1925, subsequently sanctioned by the highest
ecclesiastical authorities in Cairo and upheld by them as final,
printed and circulated by the Muslim authorities themselves, annulled
the marriages contracted by the three Bahá’í defendants and
condemned the mass heretics for having violated the laws and
ordinances of Islám. It even went so far as to make the positive,
the startling and indeed the historic assertion that the Faith
embraced by these heretics is to be regarded as a distinct religion,
wholly independent of the religious systems that have preceded it — an
assertion which hitherto the enemies of the Faith, whether in the
East or in the West, had either disputed or deliberately ignored.
Having expounded the fundamental tenets and ordinances of Islám, and
given a detailed exposition of the Bahá’í teachings, supported by
various quotations from the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, from the writings of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá and of Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl, with special
reference to certain Bahá’í laws, and demonstrated that the
defendants had, in the light of these statements, actually abjured
the Faith of Muḥammad, his formal verdict declares in the most
unequivocal terms: “The Bahá’í Faith is a new religion,
entirely independent, with beliefs, principles and laws of its own,
which differ from, and are utterly in conflict with, the beliefs,
principles and laws of Islám. No Bahá’í, therefore, can be
regarded a Muslim or vice-versa, even as no Buddhist, Brahmin, or
Christian can be regarded a Muslim or vice-versa.” Ordering the
dissolution of the contracts of marriage of the parties on trial, and
the “separation” of the husbands from their wives, this official
and memorable pronouncement concludes with the following words: “If
any one of them (husbands) repents, believes in, and acknowledges
whatsoever … Muḥammad, the Apostle of God … has brought from
God … and returns to the august Faith of Islám … and testifies
that … Muḥammad … is the Seal of the Prophets and Messengers,
that no religion will succeed His religion, that no law will abrogate
His law, that the Qur’án is the last of the Books of God and His
last Revelation to His Prophets and His Messengers … he shall be
accepted and shall be entitled to renew his marriage contract…”
This declaration of portentous significance, which was supported by
incontrovertible proofs adduced by the avowed enemies of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh themselves, which was made in a country that
aspires to the headship of Islám through the restoration of the
Caliphate, and which has received the sanction of the highest
ecclesiastical authorities in that country, this official testimony
which the leaders of Shí‘ah Islám, in both Persia and
‘Iráq, have, through a century, sedulously avoided voicing, and
which, once and for all, silences those detractors, including
Christian ecclesiastics in the West, who have in the past stigmatized
that Faith as a cult, as a Bábí sect and as an offshoot of Islám
or represented it as a synthesis of religions — such a declaration
was acclaimed by all Bahá’í communities in the East and in the
West as the first Charter of the emancipation of the Cause of
Bahá’u’lláh from the fetters of Islamic orthodoxy, the first
historic step taken, not by its adherents as might have been
expected, but by its adversaries on the road leading to its ultimate
and world-wide recognition.
Such a verdict, fraught with incalculable possibilities, was
immediately recognized as a powerful challenge which the builders of
the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh were not
slow to face and accept. It imposed upon them a sacred obligation
which they felt ready to discharge. Designed by its authors to
deprive their adversaries of access to Muslim courts, and thereby
place them in a perplexing and embarrassing situation, it became a
lever which the Egyptian Bahá’í community, followed later by its
sister-communities, readily utilized for the purpose of asserting the
independence of its Faith and of seeking for it the recognition of
its government. Translated into several languages, circulated among
Bahá’í communities in East and West, it gradually paved the way
for the initiation of negotiations between the elected
representatives of these communities and the civil authorities in
Egypt, in the Holy Land, in Persia and even in the United States of
America, for the purpose of securing the official recognition by
these authorities of the Faith as an independent religion.
In Egypt it was the signal for the adoption of a series of measures
which have in their cumulative effect greatly facilitated the
extension of such a recognition by a government which is still
formally associated with the religion of Islám, and which suffers
its laws and regulations to be shaped in a great measure by the views
and pronouncements of its ecclesiastical leaders. The inflexible
determination of the Egyptian believers not to deviate a hair’s
breadth from the tenets of their Faith, by avoiding all dealings with
any Muslim ecclesiastical court in that country and by refusing any
ecclesiastical post which might be offered them; the codification and
publication of the fundamental laws of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas regarding
matters of personal status, such as marriage, divorce, inheritance
and burial, and the presentation of these laws to the Egyptian
Cabinet; the issuance of marriage and divorce certificates by the
Egyptian National Spiritual Assembly; the assumption by that Assembly
of all the duties and responsibilities connected with the conduct of
Bahá’í marriages and divorces, as well as with the burial of the
dead; the observance by all members of that community of the nine
Holy Days on which work, as prescribed in the Bahá’í teachings,
must be completely suspended; the presentation of a petition
addressed by the national elected representatives of that community
to the Egyptian Prime Minister, the Minister of the Interior and the
Minister of Justice (supported by a similar communication addressed
by the American National Spiritual Assembly to the Egyptian
Government), enclosing a copy of the judgment of the Court, and of
their national Bahá’í constitution and by-laws, requesting them
to recognize their Assembly as a body qualified to exercise the
functions of an independent court and empowered to apply, in all
matters affecting their personal status, the laws and ordinances
revealed by the Author of their Faith — these stand out as the
initial consequences of a historic pronouncement that must eventually
lead to the establishment of that Faith on a basis of absolute
equality with its sister religions in that land.
A corollary to this epoch-making declaration, and a direct
consequence of the intermittent disturbances instigated in Port Said
and Ismá‘ílíyyih by a fanatical populace in connection with the
burial of some of the members of the Bahá’í community, was the
official and no less remarkable fatvá (judgment) issued, at the
request of the Ministry of Justice, by the Grand Muftí of Egypt.
This, soon after its pronouncement, was published in the Egyptian
press and contributed to fortify further the independent status of
the Faith. It followed upon the riots which broke out with
exceptional fury in Ismá‘ílíyyih, when angry crowds surrounded
the funeral cortège of Muḥammad Sulaymán, a prominent Bahá’í
resident of that town, creating such an uproar that the police had to
intervene, and having rescued the body and brought it back to the
home of the deceased, they were forced to carry it without escort, at
night, to the edge of the desert and inter it in the wilderness.
This judgment was passed as a result of the inquiry addressed in
writing, on January 24, 1939, by the Egyptian Ministry of the
Interior to the Ministry of Justice, enclosing a copy of the
compilation of Bahá’í laws related to matters of personal status
published by the Egyptian Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly, and
asking for a pronouncement by the Muftí regarding the petition
addressed by that Assembly to the Egyptian Government for the
allocation of four plots to serve as cemeteries for the Bahá’í
communities of Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Ismá‘ílíyyih.
“We are,” wrote the Muftí in his reply of March 11, 1939, to the
communication addressed to him by the Ministry of Justice, “in
receipt of your letter … dated February 21, 1939, with its
enclosures … inquiring whether or not it would be lawful to bury
the Bahá’í dead in Muslim cemeteries. We hereby declare that this
Community is not to be regarded as Muslim, as shown by the beliefs
which it professes. The perusal of what they term ‘The Bahá’í
Laws affecting Matters of Personal Status,’ accompanying the
papers, is deemed sufficient evidence. Whoever among its members had
formerly been a Muslim has, by virtue of his belief in the
pretensions of this community, renounced Islám, and is regarded as
beyond its pale, and is subject to the laws governing apostasy as
established in the right Faith of Islám. This community not being
Muslim, it would be unlawful to bury its dead in Muslim cemeteries,
be they originally Muslims or otherwise…”
It was in consequence of this final, this clearly-worded and
authoritative sentence by the highest exponent of Islamic Law in
Egypt, and after prolonged negotiations, resulting at first in the
allocation to the Cairo Bahá’í community of a cemetery plot
forming a part of that set aside for free thinkers, residing in that
city, that the Egyptian government consented to grant to that
community, as well as to the Bahá’ís of Ismá‘ílíyyih, two
tracts of land to serve as burial grounds for their dead — an act of
historic significance which was greatly welcomed by the members of
sore-pressed and long-suffering communities, and which has served to
demonstrate still further the independent character of their Faith
and enlarge the sphere of the jurisdiction of its representative
institutions.
It was to the first of these two officially designated Bahá’í
cemeteries, following the decision of the Egyptian Bahá’í
National Assembly aided by its sister-Assembly in Persia, that the
remains of the illustrious Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl were transferred
and accorded a sepulture worthy of his high position, thereby
inaugurating, in a befitting manner, the first official Bahá’í
institution of its kind established in the East. This achievement
was, soon after, enhanced by the exhumation from a Christian cemetery
in Cairo of the body of that far-famed mother teacher of the West,
Mrs. E. Getsinger, and its interment, through the assistance extended
by the American Bahá’í National Assembly and the Department of
State in Washington, in a spot in the heart of that cemetery and
adjoining the resting-place of that distinguished author and champion
of the Faith.
Recognition of the independent status of the Faith at its world center
In the Holy Land, where a Bahá’í cemetery had, before these
pronouncements, been established during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
ministry, the historic decision to bury the Bahá’í dead facing
the Qiblih in ‘Akká was taken — a measure whose significance was
heightened by the resolution to cease having recourse, as had been
previously the case, to any Muḥammadan court in all matters
affecting marriage and divorce, and to carry out, in their entirety
and without any concealment whatever, the rites prescribed by
Bahá’u’lláh for the preparation and burial of the dead. This
was soon after followed by the presentation of a formal petition
addressed by the representatives of the local Bahá’í community of
Haifa, dated May 4, 1929, to the Palestine Authorities, requesting
them that, pending the adoption of a uniform civil law of personal
status applicable to all residents of the country irrespective of
their religious beliefs, the community be officially recognized by
them and be granted “full powers to administer its own affairs now
enjoyed by other religious communities in Palestine.”
The acceptance of this petition — an act of tremendous significance
and wholly unprecedented in the history of the Faith in any
country — according official recognition by the civil authorities to
marriage certificates issued by the representatives of the local
community, the validity of which the official representative of the
Persian Government in Palestine has tacitly recognized, was followed
by a series of decisions exempting from government tax all properties
and institutions regarded by the Bahá’í community as holy sites,
or dedicated to the Tombs of its Founders at its world center.
Moreover, through these decisions, all articles serving as ornaments
or furniture for the Bahá’í shrines were exempted from customs
duties, and the branches of both the American and Indian Bahá’í
National Spiritual Assemblies were enabled to function as “religious
societies,” in accordance with the laws of the country, and to hold
and administer property as agents of these Assemblies.
Assertion of the independence of the Faith by its followers in Persia
In Persia, where a far larger community, already numerically superior
to the Christian, the Jewish and the Zoroastrian minorities living in
that country, had, notwithstanding the traditionally hostile attitude
of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, succeeded in rearing the
structure of its administrative institutions, the reaction to so
momentous a declaration was such as to inspire its members and induce
them to exploit, in the fullest measure possible, the enormous
advantages which this wholly unexpected testimonial had conferred
upon them. Having survived the fiery ordeals to which the cruel, the
arrogant and implacable leaders of an all-powerful priesthood, now
grievously humiliated, had subjected it, a triumphant community, just
emerging from obscurity, was determined, more than ever before, to
press, within the limits prescribed for it by its Founders, its claim
to be regarded as an independent religious entity, and to safeguard,
by all available means, its integrity, the solidarity of its members
and the solidity of its elective institutions. It could no longer,
now that its declared adversaries had, in such a country, in such a
language, and on so important an issue, made so emphatic and sweeping
a pronouncement, and torn asunder the veil that had for so long been
drawn over some of the distinguishing verities lying at the core of
its doctrine, keep silent or tolerate without any protest the
imposition of restrictions calculated to circumscribe its powers,
stifle its community life and deny it its right to be placed on a
footing of unqualified equality with other religious communities in
that land.
Inflexibly resolved to be classified no longer as Muslim, Jew,
Christian or Zoroastrian, the members of this community determined,
as a first step, to adopt such measures as would vindicate beyond
challenge the distinctive position claimed for their religion by its
avowed enemies. Mindful of their clear, their sacred and inescapable
duty to obey unreservedly, in all matters of a purely administrative
character, the laws of their country, but firmly determined to assert
and demonstrate, through every legitimate means at their disposal,
the independent character of their Faith, they formulated a policy
and embarked in undertakings designed to carry them a stage further
towards the goal they had set themselves to attain.
The steadfast resolution not to dissemble their faith, whatever the
sacrifices it might entail; the uncompromising position that they
would not refer any matters affecting their personal status to any
Muslim, Christian, Rabbinical or Zoroastrian court; the refusal to
affiliate with any organization, or accept any ecclesiastical post
associated with any of the recognized religions in their country; the
universal observance of the laws prescribed in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas
relating to obligatory prayers, fasting, marriage, divorce,
inheritance, burial of the dead, and the use of opium and alcoholic
beverages; the issue and circulation of certificates of birth, death,
marriage and divorce, at the direction and under the seal of
recognized Bahá’í Assemblies; the translation into Persian of
“The Bahá’í Laws affecting Matters of Personal Status,” first
published by the Egyptian Bahá’í National Assembly; the cessation
of work on all Bahá’í Holy Days; the establishment of Bahá’í
cemeteries in the capital as well as in the provinces, designed to
provide a common burial ground for all ranks of the faithful,
whatever their religious extraction; the insistence that they no
longer be registered as Muslim, Christian, Jew or Zoroastrian on
identity cards, marriage certificates, passports and other official
documents; the emphasis placed on the institution of the Nineteen Day
Feast, as established by Bahá’u’lláh in His Most Holy Book; the
imposition of sanctions by Bahá’í elective Assemblies, now
assuming the duties and functions of religious courts, on
recalcitrant members of the community by denying them the right to
vote and of membership in these Assemblies and their committees — all
these are to be associated with the first stirrings of a community
that had erected the fabric of its Administrative Order, and was now,
under the propelling influence of the historic judicial sentence
passed in Egypt, intent upon obtaining, not by force but through
persuasion, the recognition by the civil authorities of the status to
which its ecclesiastical adversaries had so emphatically borne
witness.
That its initial attempt should have met with partial success, that
it should have aroused at times the suspicion of the ruling
authorities, that it should have been grossly misrepresented by its
vigilant enemies, is not a matter for surprise. It was successful in
certain respects in its negotiations with the civil authorities, as
in obtaining the government decree removing all references to
religious affiliation in passports issued to Persian subjects, and in
the tacit permission granted in certain localities that its members
should not fill in the religious columns in certain state documents,
but should register with their own Assemblies their marriage, their
divorce, their birth and their death certificates, and should conduct
their funerals according to their religious rites. In other respects,
however, it has been subjected to grave disabilities: its schools,
founded, owned and controlled exclusively by itself, were forcibly
closed because they refused to remain open on Bahá’í holy days;
its members, both men and women, were prosecuted; those who held army
or civil service appointments were in some cases dismissed; a ban was
placed on the import, on the printing and circulation of its
literature; and all Bahá’í public gatherings were proscribed.
To all administrative regulations which the civil authorities have
issued from time to time, or will issue in the future in that land,
as in all other countries, the Bahá’í community, faithful to its
sacred obligations towards its government, and conscious of its civic
duties, has yielded, and will continue to yield implicit obedience.
Its immediate closing of its schools in Persia is a proof of this. To
such orders, however, as are tantamount to a recantation of their
faith by its members, or constitute an act of disloyalty to its
spiritual, its basic and God-given principles and precepts, it will
stubbornly refuse to bow, preferring imprisonment, deportation and
all manner of persecution, including death — as already suffered by
the twenty thousand martyrs that have laid down their lives in the
path of its Founders — rather than follow the dictates of a temporal
authority requiring it to renounce its allegiance to its cause.
“If you cut us in pieces, men, women and children alike, in the
entire district of Ábádih,” was the memorable message sent by the
fearless descendants of some of those martyrs in that turbulent
center to the Governor of Fárs, who had intended to coerce them into
declaring themselves as Muslims, “we will never submit to your
wishes” — a message which, as soon as it was delivered to that
defiant governor, induced him to desist from pressing the matter any
further.
Official recognition of Bahá’í administrative institutions in the United States of America
In the United States of America, the Bahá’í community, having
already set an inspiring example, by erecting and perfecting the
machinery of its Administrative Order, was alive to the far-reaching
implications of the sentence passed by the Muslim court in Egypt, and
to the significance of the reaction it had produced in the Holy Land,
and was stimulated by the courageous persistence demonstrated by its
sister-community in Persia. It determined to supplement its notable
achievements with further acts designed to throw into sharper relief
the status achieved by the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the North
American continent. It was numerically smaller than the community of
the Persian believers. Owing to the multiplicity of laws governing
the states within the Union, it was faced, in matters affecting the
personal status of its members, with a situation radically different
from that confronting the believers in the East, and much more
complex. But conscious of its responsibility to lend, once again, a
powerful impetus to the unfoldment of a divinely appointed Order, it
boldly undertook to initiate such measures as would accentuate the
independent character of a Revelation it had already so nobly
championed.
The recognition of its National Spiritual Assembly by the Federal
authorities as a religious body entitled to hold as trustees
properties dedicated to the interests of the Faith; the establishment
of Bahá’í endowments and the exemption obtained for them from the
civil authorities as properties owned by, and administered solely for
the benefit of, a purely religious community, were now to be
supplemented by decisions and measures designed to give further
prominence to the nature of the ties uniting its members. The special
stress laid on some of the fundamental laws contained in the
Kitáb-i-Aqdas regarding daily obligatory prayers; the observance of
the fast, the consent of the parents as a prerequisite of marriage;
the one-year separation between husband and wife as an indispensable
condition of divorce; abstinence from all alcoholic drinks; the
emphasis placed on the institution of the Nineteen Day Feast as
ordained by Bahá’u’lláh in that same Book; the discontinuation
of membership in, and affiliation with, all ecclesiastical
organizations, and the refusal to accept any ecclesiastical
post — these have served to forcibly underline the distinctive
character of the Bahá’í Fellowship, and to dissociate it, in the
eyes of the public, from the rituals, the ceremonials and man-made
institutions identified with the religious systems of the past.
Of particular and historic importance has been the application made
by the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Chicago — the first
center established in the North American continent, the first to be
incorporated among its sister-Assemblies and the first to take the
initiative in paving the way for the erection of a Bahá’í Temple
in the West — to the civil authorities in the state of Illinois for
civil recognition of the right to conduct legal marriages in
accordance with the ordinances of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and to file
marriage certificates that have previously received the official
sanction of that Assembly. The acceptance of this petition by the
authorities, necessitating an amendment of the by-laws of all local
Assemblies to enable them to conduct Bahá’í legal marriages, and
empowering the Chairman or secretary of the Chicago Assembly to
represent that body in the conduct of all Bahá’í marriages; the
issuance, on September 22, 1939, of the first Bahá’í Marriage
License by the State of Illinois, authorizing the aforementioned
Assembly to solemnize Bahá’í marriages and issue Bahá’í
marriage certificates; the successful measures taken subsequently by
Assemblies in other states of the Union, such as New York, New
Jersey, Wisconsin and Ohio, to procure for themselves similar
privileges, have, moreover, contributed their share in giving added
prominence to the independent religious status of the Faith. To these
must be added a similar and no less significant recognition extended,
since the outbreak of the present conflict, by the United States War
Department — as evidenced by the communication addressed to the
American Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly by the Quartermaster
General of that Department, on August 14, 1942 — approving the use of
the symbol of the Greatest Name on stones marking the graves of
Bahá’ís killed in the war and buried in military or private
cemeteries, distinguishing thereby these graves from those bearing
the Latin Cross or the Star of David assigned to those belonging to
the Christian and Jewish Faiths respectively.
Nor should mention be omitted of the equally successful application
made by the American Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly to the
Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C., asking that the
chairmen and secretaries of Bahá’í local Assemblies should, in
their capacity as officers conducting religious meetings, and
authorized, in certain states, to perform marriage services, be
eligible for preferred mileage under the provisions of the Preferred
Mileage Section of the Gasoline Regulations, for the purpose of
meeting the religious needs of the localities they serve.
Nor have the Bahá’í communities in other countries such as India,
‘Iráq, Great Britain and Australia, been slow to either appreciate
the advantages derived from the publication of this historic verdict,
or to exploit, each according to its capacity and within the limits
imposed upon it by prevailing circumstances, the opportunities
afforded by such public testimonial for a further demonstration on
their part of the independent character of the Faith whose
administrative structure they had already erected. Through the
enforcement, to whatever extent deemed practicable, of the laws
ordained in their Most Holy Book; through the severance of all ties
of affiliation with, and membership in, ecclesiastical institutions
of whatever denomination; through the formulation of a policy
initiated for the sole purpose of giving further publicity to this
mighty issue, marking a great turning-point in the evolution of the
Faith, and of facilitating its ultimate settlement, these
communities, and indeed all organized Bahá’í bodies, whether in
the East or in the West, however isolated their position or immature
their state of development, have, conscious of their solidarity and
well aware of the glorious prospects opening before them, arisen to
proclaim with one voice the independent character of the religion of
Bahá’u’lláh and to pave the way for its emancipation from
whatever fetters, be they ecclesiastical or otherwise, might hinder
or delay its ultimate and world-wide recognition.
To the status already achieved by their Faith, largely through their
own unaided efforts and accomplishments, tributes have been paid by
observers in various walks of life, whose testimony they welcome and
regard as added incentive to action in their steep and laborious
ascent towards the heights which they must eventually capture.
“Palestine,” is the testimony of Prof. Norman Bentwitch, a former
Attorney-General of the Palestine Government, “may indeed be now
regarded as the land not of three but of four Faiths, because the
Bahá’í creed, which has its center of faith and pilgrimage in
‘Akká and Haifa, is attaining to the character of a world
religion. So far as its influence goes in the land, it is a factor
making for international and inter-religious understanding.” “In
1920,” is the declaration made in his testament by the
distinguished Swiss scientist and psychiatrist, Dr. Auguste Forel, “I
learned at Karlsruhe of the supraconfessional world religion of the
Bahá’ís, founded in the Orient seventy years ago by a Persian,
Bahá’u’lláh. This is the real religion of ‘Social Welfare’
without dogmas or priests, binding together all men of this small
terrestrial globe of ours. I have become a Bahá’í. May this
religion live and prosper for the good of humanity! This is my most
ardent desire.” “There is bound to be a world state, a universal
language, and a universal religion,” he, moreover has stated, “The
Bahá’í Movement for the oneness of mankind is, in my estimation,
the greatest movement today working for universal peace and
brotherhood.” “A religion,” is yet another testimony, from the
pen of the late Queen Marie of Rumania, “which links all creeds …
a religion based upon the inner spirit of God … It teaches that all
hatreds, intrigues, suspicions, evil words, all aggressive patriotism
even, are outside the one essential law of God, and that special
beliefs are but surface things whereas the heart that beats with
Divine love knows no tribe nor race.”
While the fabric of the Administrative Order of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh gradually arose, and while through the influence of
unforeseen forces the independence of the Faith was more and more
definitely acknowledged by its enemies and demonstrated by its
friends, another development, no less pregnant with consequences, was
at the same time being set in motion. The purpose of this was to
extend the borders of the Faith, increasing the number of its
declared supporters and of its administrative centers, and to give a
new and ever growing impetus to the enriching, the expanding, the
diversifying of its literature, and to the task of disseminating it
farther and farther afield. Experience indeed proved that the very
pattern of the Administrative Order, apart from other distinctive
features, definitely encouraged efficiency and expedition in this
work of teaching, and its builders found their zeal continually
quickened and their missionary ardor heightened as the Faith moved
forward to an ever fuller emancipation.
Nor were they unmindful of the exhortations, the appeals and the
promises of the Founders of their Faith, Who, for three quarters of a
century, had, each in His own way and within the limits
circumscribing His activities, labored so heroically to noise abroad
the fame of the Cause Whose destiny an almighty Providence had
commissioned them to shape.
The Herald of their Faith had commanded the sovereigns of the earth
themselves to arise and teach His Cause, writing in the
Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’: “O concourse of kings! Deliver with truth
and in all haste the verses sent down by Us to the peoples of Turkey
and of India, and beyond them … to lands in both the East and the
West.”
“Issue forth from your cities, O peoples of the
West,”
He, in that same Book, had moreover written, “to
aid God.”
“We behold you from Our Most Glorious Horizon,”
Bahá’u’lláh had thus addressed His followers in His
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, “and will assist whosoever will arise to aid My
Cause with the hosts of the Concourse on high, and a cohort of the
angels, who are nigh unto Me.”
“…Teach ye the Cause of
God, O people of Bahá!”
He, furthermore, had written, “for
God hath prescribed unto every one the duty of proclaiming His
message, and regardeth it as the most meritorious of all deeds.”
“Should a man all alone,”
He had clearly affirmed, “arise
in the name of Bahá and put on the armor of His love, him will the
Almighty cause to be victorious, though the forces of earth and
heaven be arrayed against him.”
“Should any one arise for
the triumph of Our Cause,”
He moreover had declared, “him
will God render victorious though tens of thousands of enemies be
leagued against him.”
And again: “Center your energies in
the propagation of the Faith of God. Whoso is worthy of so high a
calling, let him arise and promote it. Whoso is unable, it is his
duty to appoint him who will, in his stead, proclaim this
Revelation…”
“They that have forsaken their country,”
is His own promise, “for the purpose of teaching Our Cause — these
shall the Faithful Spirit strengthen through its power … Such a
service is indeed the prince of all goodly deeds, and the ornament of
every goodly act.”
“In these days,”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá
had written in His Will, “the most important of all things is
the guidance of the nations and peoples of the world. Teaching the
Cause is of the utmost importance, for it is the head corner-stone of
the foundation itself.”
“The disciples of Christ,”
He had declared in that same Document, “forgot themselves and
all earthly things, forsook all their cares and belongings, purged
themselves of self and passion, and, with absolute detachment,
scattered far and wide, and engaged in guiding aright the peoples of
the world, till at last they made the world another world, illumined
the earth, and to their last hour proved self-sacrificing in the path
of that Beloved One of God. Finally, in various lands they suffered
martyrdom. Let men of action follow in their footsteps.”
“When
the hour cometh,”
He had solemnly stated in that same Will,
“that this wronged and broken-winged bird will have taken its
flight unto the celestial concourse … it is incumbent upon … the
friends and loved ones, one and all, to bestir themselves and arise,
with heart and soul, and in one accord … to teach His Cause and
promote His Faith. It behoveth them not to rest for a moment … They
must disperse themselves in every land … and travel throughout all
regions. Bestirred, without rest, and steadfast to the end, they must
raise in every land the cry of Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá (O Thou
the Glory of Glories) … that throughout the East and the West a
vast concourse may gather under the shadow of the Word of God, that
the sweet savors of holiness may be wafted, that men’s faces may be
illumined, that their hearts may be filled with the Divine Spirit and
their souls become heavenly.”
Obedient to these repeated injunctions, mindful of these glowing
promises, conscious of the sublimity of their calling, spurred on by
the example which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself had set, undismayed
by His sudden removal from their midst, undaunted by the attacks
launched by their adversaries from within and from without, His
followers in both the East and in the West arose, in the full
strength of their solidarity, to promote, more vigorously than ever
before, the international expansion of their Faith, an expansion
which was now to assume such proportions as to deserve to be
recognized as one of the most significant developments in the history
of the first Bahá’í century.
Launched in every continent of the globe, at first intermittent,
haphazard, and unorganized, and later, as a result of the emergence
of a slowly developing Administrative Order, systematically
conducted, centrally directed and efficiently prosecuted, the
teaching enterprises which were undertaken by the followers of
Bahá’u’lláh in many lands, but conspicuously in America, and
which were pursued by members of all ages and of both sexes, by
neophytes and by veterans, by itinerant teachers and by settlers,
constitute, by virtue of their range and the blessings which have
flowed from them, a shining episode that yields place to none except
those associated with the exploits which have immortalized the early
years of the primitive age of the Bahá’í Dispensation.
The light of the Faith which during the nine years of the Bábí
Dispensation had irradiated Persia, and been reflected on the
adjoining territory of ‘Iráq; which in the course of Bahá’u’lláh’s
thirty-nine-year ministry had shed its splendor upon India, Egypt,
Turkey, the Caucasus, Turkistán, the Súdán, Palestine, Syria,
Lebanon and Burma, and which had subsequently, through the impulse of
a divinely-instituted Covenant, traveled to the United States of
America, Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Russia,
Italy, Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, Arabia, Tunisia, China, Japan,
the Hawaiian Islands, South Africa, Brazil and Australia, was now to
be carried to, and illuminate, ere the termination of the first
Bahá’í century, no less than thirty-four independent nations, as
well as several dependencies situated in the American, the Asiatic
and African continents, in the Persian Gulf, and in the Atlantic and
the Pacific oceans. In Norway, in Sweden, in Denmark, in Belgium, in
Finland, in Ireland, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Rumania, in
Yugoslavia, in Bulgaria, in Albania, in Afghánistán, in Abyssinia, in
New Zealand and in nineteen Latin American Republics ensigns of the
Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh have been raised since ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
passing, and the structural basis of the Administrative Order of His
Faith, in many of them, already established. In several dependencies,
moreover, in both the East and the West, including Alaska, Iceland,
Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the island of Solano in the Philippines, Java,
Tasmania, the islands of Baḥrayn and of Tahiti, Balúchistán, South
Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo, the bearers of the new born Gospel
have established their residence, and are bending every effort to lay
an impregnable basis for its institutions.
Through lectures and conferences, through the press and radio,
through the organization of study classes and fire-side gatherings,
through participation in the activities of societies, institutes and
clubs animated by ideals akin to the principles of the Faith, through
the dissemination of Bahá’í literature, through various exhibits,
through the establishment of teacher training classes, through
contact with statesmen, scholars, publicists, philanthropists and
other leaders of public thought — most of which have been carried out
through the resourcefulness of the members of the American Bahá’í
community, who have assumed direct responsibility for the spiritual
conquest of the vast majority of these countries and
dependencies — above all through the inflexible resolution and
unswerving fidelity of pioneers who, whether as visiting teachers or
as residents, have participated in these crusades, have these signal
victories been achieved during the closing decades of the first
Bahá’í century.
Nor should reference be omitted to the international teaching
activities of the western followers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh,
and particularly the members of the stalwart American Bahá’í
community, who, seizing every opportunity that presented itself to
them, have either through example, precept or the circulation of
literature carried the Faith to virgin fields, scattering the seeds
which must eventually germinate and yield a harvest as notable as
those already garnered in the aforementioned countries. Through such
efforts as these the breezes of God’s vitalizing Revelation have
been blown upon the uttermost corners of the earth, bearing the germ
of a new spiritual life to such distant climes and inhospitable
regions as Lapland; the Island of Spitzbergen, the northernmost
settlement in the world; Hammerfest, in Norway, and Magellanes, in
the extremity of Chile — the most northerly and southerly cities of
the globe respectively; Pago Pago and Fiji, in the Pacific Ocean;
Chichen Itza, in the province of Yucatan; the Bahama Islands,
Trinidad and Barbados in the West Indies; the Island of Bali and
British North Borneo in the East Indies; Patagonia; British Guiana;
Seychelles Islands; New Guinea and Ceylon.
Nor can we fail to notice the special endeavors that have been
exerted by individuals as well as Assemblies for the purpose of
establishing contact with minority groups and races in various parts
of the world, such as the Jews and Negroes in the United States of
America, the Eskimos in Alaska, the Patagonian Indians in Argentina,
the Mexican Indians in Mexico, the Inca Indians in Peru, the Cherokee
Indians in North Carolina, the Oneida Indians in Wisconsin, the
Mayans in Yucatan, the Lapps in Northern Scandinavia, and the Maoris
in Rotorua, New Zealand.
Of special and valuable assistance has been the institution of an
international Bahá’í Bureau in Geneva, a center designed
primarily to facilitate the expansion of the teaching activities of
the Faith in the European continent, which, as an auxiliary to the
world administrative center in the Holy Land, has maintained contact
with Bahá’í communities in the East and in the West. Serving as a
bureau of information on the Faith, as well as a distributing center
for its literature, it has, through its free reading room and lending
library, through the hospitality extended to itinerant teachers and
visiting believers, and through its contact with various societies,
contributed, in no small measure, to the consolidation of the
teaching enterprises undertaken by individuals as well as Bahá’í
National Assemblies.
Through these teaching activities, some initiated by individual
believers, others conducted through plans launched by organized
Assemblies, the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh which, in His lifetime,
had included within its ranks Persians, Arabs, Turks, Russians,
Kurds, Indians, Burmese and Negroes, and was later, in the days of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, reinforced by the inclusion of American,
British, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Armenian
converts, could now boast of having enrolled amongst its avowed
supporters representatives of such widely dispersed ethnic groups and
nationalities as Hungarians, Netherlanders, Irishmen, Scandinavians,
Sudanese, Czechs, Bulgarians, Finns, Ethiopians, Albanians, Poles,
Eskimos, American Indians, Yugoslavians, Latin Americans and Maoris.
Enlargement of the limits of the Faith
So notable an enlargement of the limits of the Faith, so striking an
increase in the diversity of the elements included within its pale,
was accompanied by an enormous extension in the volume and the
circulation of its literature, an extension that sharply contrasted
with those initial measures undertaken for the publication of the few
editions of Bahá’u’lláh’s writing issued during the
concluding years of His ministry. The range of Bahá’í literature,
confined during half a century, in the days of the Báb and of
Bahá’u’lláh, to the two languages in which their teachings were
originally revealed, and subsequently extended, in the lifetime of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, to include editions published in the
English, the French, the German, the Turkish, the Russian and Burmese
languages, was steadily enlarged after His passing, through a vast
multiplication in the number of books, treatises, pamphlets and
leaflets, printed and circulated in no less than twenty-nine
additional languages. In Spanish and in Portuguese; in the three
Scandinavian languages, in Finnish and in Icelandic; in Dutch,
Italian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian, Serbian, Bulgarian,
Greek and Albanian; in Hebrew and in Esperanto, in Armenian, in
Kurdish and in Amharic; in Chinese and in Japanese; as well as in
five Indian languages, namely Urdu, Gujrati, Bengali, Hindi, and
Sindhi, books, mostly through the initiative of individual Bahá’ís,
and partly through the intermediary of Bahá’í assemblies, were
published, widely distributed, and placed in private as well as
public libraries in both the East and the West. The literature of the
Faith, moreover, is being translated at present into Latvian,
Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Tamil, Mahratti, Pushtoo, Telegu, Kinarese,
Singhalese, Malyalan, Oriya, Punjabi and Rajasthani.
Expansion of Bahá’í Literature
No less remarkable has been the range of the literature produced and
placed at the disposal of the general public in every continent of
the globe, and carried by resolute and indefatigable pioneers to the
furthermost ends of the earth, an enterprise in which the members of
the American Bahá’í community have again distinguished
themselves. The publication of an English edition comprising selected
passages from the more important and hitherto untranslated writings
of Bahá’u’lláh, as well as of an English version of His
“Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,” and of a compilation, in the
same language, of Prayers and Meditations revealed by His pen; the
translation and publication of His “Hidden Words” in eight, of
His “Kitáb-i-Íqán” in seven, and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
“Some Answered Questions” in six, languages; the compilation of
the third volume of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablets translated
into English; the publication of books and treatises related to the
principles of Bahá’í belief and to the origin and development of
the Administrative Order of the Faith; of an English translation of
the Narrative of the early days of the Bahá’í Revelation, written
by the chronicler and poet, Nabíl-i-Zarandí, subsequently published
in Arabic and translated into German and Esperanto; of commentaries
and of expositions of the Bahá’í teachings, of administrative
institutions and of kindred subjects, such as world federation, race
unity and comparative religion by western authors and by former
ministers of the Church — all these attest the diversified character
of Bahá’í publications, so closely paralleled by their extensive
dissemination over the surface of the globe. Moreover, the printing
of documents related to the laws of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, of books and
pamphlets dealing with Biblical prophecies, of revised editions of
some of the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
and of several Bahá’í authors, of guides and study outlines for a
wide variety of Bahá’í books and subjects, of lessons in Bahá’í
Administration, of indexes to Bahá’í books and periodicals, of
anniversary cards and of calendars, of poems, songs, plays and
pageants, of study outlines and a prayer-book for the training of
Bahá’í children, and of news letters, bulletins and periodicals
issued in English, Persian, German, Esperanto, Arabic, French, Urdu,
Burmese and Portuguese has contributed to swell the output and
increase the diversity of Bahá’í publications.
Of particular value and significance has been the production, over a
period of many years, of successive volumes of biennial international
record of Bahá’í activity, profusely illustrated, fully
documented, and comprising among other things a statement on the aims
and purposes of the Faith and its Administrative Order, selections
from its scriptures, a survey of its activities, a list of its
centers in five continents, a bibliography of its literature,
tributes paid to its ideals and achievements by prominent men and
women in East and West, and articles dealing with its relation to
present-day problems.
Nor would any survey of the Bahá’í literature produced during the
concluding decades of the first Bahá’í century be complete
without special reference being made to the publication of, and the
far-reaching influence exerted by, that splendid, authoritative and
comprehensive introduction to Bahá’í history and teachings,
penned by that pure-hearted and immortal promoter of the Faith, J. E.
Esslemont, which has already been printed in no less than
thirty-seven languages, and is being translated into thirteen
additional languages, whose English version has already run into tens
of thousands, which has been reprinted no less than nine times in the
United States of America, whose Esperanto, Japanese and English
versions have been transcribed into Braille, and to which royalty has
paid its tribute, characterizing it as “a glorious book of love and
goodness, strength and beauty,” commending it to all, and affirming
that “no man could fail to be better because of this Book.”
Deserving special mention, moreover, is the establishment by the
British National Spiritual Assembly of a Publishing Trust, registered
as “The Bahá’í Publishing Co.” and acting as a publisher and
wholesale distributor of Bahá’í literature throughout the British
Isles; the compilation by various Bahá’í Assemblies throughout
the East of no less than forty volumes in manuscript of the
authenticated and unpublished writings of the Báb, of Bahá’u’lláh
and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; the translation into English of the
Appendix to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, entitled “Questions and Answers,”
as well as the publication in Arabic and Persian by the Egyptian and
Indian Bahá’í National Spiritual Assemblies respectively of the
Outline of Bahá’í Laws on Matters of Personal Status, and of a
brief outline by the latter Assembly of the laws relating to the
burial of the dead; and the translation of a pamphlet into Maori
undertaken by a Maori Bahá’í in New Zealand. Reference should
also be made to the collection and publication by the Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Ṭihrán of a considerable number of
the addresses delivered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the course of
His Western tours; to the preparation of a detailed history of the
Faith in Persian; to the printing of Bahá’í certificates of
marriage and divorce, in both Persian and Arabic, by a number of
National Spiritual Assemblies in the East; to the issuance of birth
and death certificates by the Persian Bahá’í National Spiritual
Assembly; to the preparation of forms of bequest available to
believers wishing to make a legacy to the Faith; to the compilation
of a considerable number of the unpublished Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
by the American Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly; to the
translation into Esperanto, undertaken by the daughter of the famous
Zamenhof, herself a convert to the Faith, of several Bahá’í
books, including some of the more important writings of Bahá’u’lláh
and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; to the translation of a Bahá’í
booklet into Serbian by Prof. Bogdan Popovitch, one of the most
eminent scholars attached to the University of Belgrade, and to the
offer spontaneously made by Princess Ileana of Rumania (now
Arch-Duchess Anton of Austria) to render into her own native language
a Bahá’í pamphlet written in English, and subsequently
distributed in her native country.
The progress made in connection with the transcription of the Bahá’í
writings into Braille, should also be noted — a transcription which
already includes such works as the English versions of the
“Kitáb-i-Íqán,” of the “Hidden Words,” of the “Seven
Valleys,” of the “Ishráqát,” of the “Súriy-i-Haykal,”
of the “Words of Wisdom,” of the “Prayers and Meditations of
Bahá’u’lláh,” of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s “Some Answered
Questions,” of the “Promulgation of Universal Peace,” of the
“Wisdom of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” of “The Goal of a New
World Order,” as well as of the English (two editions), the
Esperanto and the Japanese versions of “Bahá’u’lláh and the
New Era” and of pamphlets written in English, in French and in
Esperanto.
Nor have those who have been primarily responsible for the enrichment
of the literature of the Faith and its translation into so many
languages, been slow to disseminate it, by every means in their
power, in their daily intercourse with individuals as well as in
their official contacts with organizations whom they have been
seeking to acquaint with the aims and principles of their Faith. The
energy, the vigilance, the steadfastness displayed by these heralds
of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh and their elected representatives,
under whose auspices the circulation of Bahá’í literature has, of
late years, assumed tremendous dimensions, merit the highest praise.
From the reports prepared and circulated by the chief agencies
entrusted with the task of the publication and distribution of this
literature in the United States and Canada the remarkable facts
emerge that, within the space of the eleven months ending February
28, 1943, over 19,000 books, 100,000 pamphlets, 3,000 study outlines,
4,000 sets of selected writings, and 1800 anniversary and Temple
cards and folders had been either sold or distributed; that, in the
course of two years, 376,000 pamphlets, outlining the character and
purpose of the House of Worship, erected in the United States of
America, had been printed; that over 300,000 pieces of literature had
been distributed at the two World Fairs held in San Francisco and New
York; that, in a period of twelve months, 1089 books had been donated
to various libraries, and that, through the National Contacts
Committee, during one year, more than 2,300 letters, with over 4,500
pamphlets, had reached authors, radio speakers, and representatives
of the Jewish and Negro minorities, as well as various organizations
interested in international affairs.
In the presentation of this vast literature to men of eminence and
rank the elected representatives, as well as the traveling teachers,
of the American Bahá’í community, aided by Assemblies in other
lands, have, likewise, exhibited an energy and determination as
laudable as the efforts exerted for its production. To the King of
England, to Queen Marie of Rumania, to President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, to the Emperor of Japan, to the late President von
Hindenburg, to the King of Denmark, to the Queen of Sweden, to King
Ferdinand of Bulgaria, to the Emperor of Abyssinia, to the King of
Egypt, to the late King Feisal of ‘Iráq, to King Zog of Albania,
to the late President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, to the Presidents of
Mexico, of Honduras, of Panama, of El-Salvador, of Guatemala, and of
Puerto Rico, to General Chiang Kaishek, to the Ex-Khedive of Egypt,
to the Crown Prince of Sweden, to the Duke of Windsor, to the Duchess
of Kent, to the Arch-Duchess Anton of Austria, to Princess Olga of
Yugoslavia, to Princess Kadria of Egypt, to Princess Estelle
Bernadotte of Wisborg, to Mahatma Gandhi, to several ruling princes
of India and to the Prime Ministers of all the states of the
Australian Commonwealth — to these, as well as to other personages of
lesser rank, Bahá’í literature, touching various aspects of the
Faith, has been presented, to some personally, to others through
suitable intermediaries, either by individual believers or by the
elected representatives of Bahá’í communities.
Nor have these individual teachers and Assemblies been neglectful of
their duty to place this literature at the disposal of the public in
state, university and public libraries, thereby extending the
opportunity to the great mass of the reading public of familiarizing
itself with the history and precepts of the Revelation of
Bahá’u’lláh. A mere enumeration of a number of the more
important of these libraries would suffice to reveal the scope of
these activities extending over five continents: the British Museum
in London, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Library of Congress in
Washington, the Peace Palace Library at the Hague, the Nobel Peace
Foundation and Nansen Foundation Libraries at Oslo, the Royal Library
in Copenhagen, the League of Nations Library in Geneva, the Hoover
Peace Library, the Amsterdam University Library, the Library of
Parliament in Ottawa, the Allahabad University Library, the Aligarh
University Library, the University of Madras Library, the
Shantineketan International University Library in Bolepur, the
‘Uthmáníyyih University Library in Hyderabad, the Imperial
Library in Calcutta, the Jamia Milli Library in Delhi, the Mysore
University Library, the Bernard Library in Rangoon, the Jerabia Wadia
Library in Poona, the Lahore Public Library, the Lucknow and Delhi
University Libraries, the Johannesburg Public Library, the Rio de
Janeiro Circulating libraries, the Manila National Library, the Hong
Kong University Library, the Reykjavik public libraries, the Carnegie
Library in the Seychelles Islands, the Cuban National Library, the
San Juan Public Library, the Ciudad Trujillo University Library, the
University and Carnegie Public libraries in Puerto Rico, the Library
of Parliament in Canberra, the Wellington Parliamentary Library. In
all these, as well as in all the chief libraries of Australia and New
Zealand, nine libraries in Mexico, several libraries in Mukden,
Manchukuo, and more than a thousand public libraries, a hundred
service libraries and two hundred university and college libraries,
including Indian colleges, in the United States and Canada,
authoritative books on the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh have been
placed.
State prisons and, since the outbreak of the war, army libraries have
been included in the comprehensive scheme which the American Bahá’í
community has, through a special committee, devised for the diffusion
of the literature of the Faith. The interests of the blind, too, have
not been neglected by that alert and enterprising community, as is
shown by the placing of Bahá’í books, transcribed by its members
in Braille, in thirty libraries and institutes, in eighteen states of
the United States of America, in Honolulu (Hawaii), in Regina
(Saskatchewan), and in the Tokyo and Geneva Libraries for the Blind,
as well as in a large number of circulating libraries connected with
public libraries in various large cities of the North American
continent.
World-wide teaching activities of Martha Root
Nor can I dismiss this subject without singling out for special
reference her who, not only through her preponderating share in
initiating measures for the translation and dissemination of Bahá’í
literature, but above all through her prodigious and indeed unique
exertions in the international teaching field, has covered herself
with a glory that has not only eclipsed the achievements of the
teachers of the Faith among her contemporaries the globe around, but
has outshone the feats accomplished by any of its propagators in the
course of an entire century. To Martha Root, that archetype of Bahá’í
itinerant teachers and the foremost Hand raised by Bahá’u’lláh
since ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing, must be awarded, if her
manifold services and the supreme act of her life are to be correctly
appraised, the title of Leading Ambassadress of His Faith and Pride
of Bahá’í teachers, whether men or women, in both the East and
the West.
The first to arise, in the very year the Tablets of the Divine Plan
were unveiled in the United States of America, in response to the
epoch-making summons voiced in them by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá;
embarking, with unswerving resolve and a spirit of sublime
detachment, on her world journeys, covering an almost uninterrupted
period of twenty years and carrying her four times round the globe,
in the course of which she traveled four times to China and Japan and
three times to India, visited every important city in South America,
transmitted the message of the New Day to kings, queens, princes and
princesses, presidents of republics, ministers and statesmen,
publicists, professors, clergymen and poets, as well as a vast number
of people in various walks of life, and contacted, both officially
and informally, religious congresses, peace societies, Esperanto
associations, socialist congresses, Theosophical societies, women’s
clubs and other kindred organizations, this indomitable soul has, by
virtue of the character of her exertions and the quality of the
victories she has won, established a record that constitutes the
nearest approach to the example set by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Himself to His disciples in the course of His journeys throughout the
West.
Conversion of Queen Marie of Rumania
Her eight successive audiences with Queen Marie of Rumania, the first
of which took place in January, 1926 in Controceni Palace in
Bucharest, the second in 1927 in Pelisor Palace in Sinaia, followed
by a visit in January of the ensuing year to her Majesty and her
daughter Princess Ileana, at the royal palace in Belgrade, where they
were staying as guests of the King and Queen of Yugoslavia, and
later, in October, 1929, at the Queen’s summer palace “Tehna
Yuva,” at Balcic, on the Black Sea, and again, in August, 1932 and
February, 1933, at the home of Princess Ileana (now Arch-Duchess
Anton of Austria) at Mödling, near Vienna, followed a year later, in
February, by another audience at Controceni Palace, and lastly, in
February, 1936, in that same palace — these audiences stand out, by
reason of the profound influence exerted by the visitor on her royal
hostess, as witnessed by the successive encomiums from the Queen’s
own pen, as the most outstanding feature of those memorable journeys.
The three invitations which that indefatigable champion of the Faith
received to call on Prince Paul and Princess Olga of Yugoslavia at
the Royal Palace in Belgrade; the lectures which she delivered in
over four hundred universities and colleges in both the East and the
West; her twice repeated visits to all German universities with the
exception of two, as well as to nearly a hundred universities,
colleges and schools in China; the innumerable articles which she
published in newspapers and magazines in practically every country
she visited; the numerous broadcasts which she delivered and the
unnumbered books she placed in private and state libraries; her
personal meetings with the statesmen of more than fifty countries,
during her three-months stay in Geneva, in 1932, at the time of the
Disarmament Conference; the painstaking efforts she exerted, while on
her arduous journeys, in supervising the translation and production
of a large number of versions of Dr. Esslemont’s “Bahá’u’lláh
and the New Era”; the correspondence exchanged with, and the
presentation of Bahá’í books to, men of eminence and learning;
her pilgrimage to Persia, and the touching homage paid by her to the
memory of the heroes of the Faith when visiting the Bahá’í
historic sites in that country; her visit to Adrianople, where, in
her overflowing love for Bahá’u’lláh, she searched out the
houses where He had dwelt and the people whom He had met during His
exile to that city, and where she was entertained by its governor and
mayor; the ready and unfailing assistance extended by her to the
administrators of the Faith in all countries where its institutions
had been erected or were being established — these may be regarded as
the highlights of a service which, in many of its aspects, is without
parallel in the entire history of the first Bahá’í century.
No less impressive is the list of the names of those whom she
interviewed in the course of the execution of her mission, including,
in addition to those already mentioned, such royal personages and
distinguished figures as King Haakon of Norway; King Feisal of ‘Iráq;
King Zog of Albania and members of his family; Princess Marina of
Greece (now the Duchess of Kent); Princess Elizabeth of Greece;
President Thomas G. Masaryk and President Eduard Benes of
Czechoslovakia; the President of Austria; Dr. Sun Yat Sen; Dr.
Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University; Prof.
Bogdan Popovitch of Belgrade University; the Foreign Minister of
Turkey, Tawfíq Rushdí Bey; the Chinese Foreign Minister and
Minister of Education; the Lithuanian Foreign Minister; Prince
Muḥammad-‘Alí of Egypt; Stephen Raditch; the Maharajas of Patiala,
of Benares, and of Travancore; the Governor and the Grand Muftí of
Jerusalem; Dr. Erling Eidem, Archbishop of Sweden; Sarojini Naidu;
Sir Rabindranath Tagore; Madame Huda Sha‘ráví, the
Egyptian feminist leader; Dr. K. Ichiki, minister of the Japanese
Imperial Household; Prof. Tetrujiro Inouye, Prof. Emeritus of the
Imperial University of Tokyo; Baron Yoshiro Sakatani, member of the
House of Peers of Japan and Mehmed Fu’ád, Doyen of the Faculty of
Letters and President of the Institute of Turkish history.
Neither age nor ill-health, neither the paucity of literature which
hampered her early efforts, nor the meager resources which imposed an
added burden on her labors, neither the extremities of the climates
to which she was exposed, nor the political disturbances which she
encountered in the course of her journeys, could damp the zeal or
deflect the purpose of this spiritually dynamic and saintly woman.
Single-handed and, on more than one occasion, in extremely perilous
circumstances, she continued to call, in clarion tones, men of
diverse creeds, color and classes to the Message of Bahá’u’lláh,
until, while in spite of a deadly and painful disease, the onslaught
of which she endured with heroic fortitude, she hastened homeward to
help in the recently launched Seven Year Plan, she was stricken down
on her way, in far off Honolulu. There in that symbolic spot between
the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, in both of which she had labored
so mightily, she died, on September 28, 1939, and brought to its
close a life which may well be regarded as the fairest fruit as yet
yielded by the Formative Age of the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh.
To the injunction of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá bequeathed in His Will
to follow in the footsteps of the disciples of Jesus Christ, “not
to rest for a moment,”
to “travel throughout all regions”
and to raise, “without rest and steadfast to the end,”
“in
every land, the cry of ‘Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá,’”
this
immortal heroine yielded an obedience of which the present as well as
future generations may well be proud, and which they may emulate.
“Unrestrained as the wind,”
putting her “whole trust”
in God, as “the best provision”
for her journey, she
fulfilled almost to the letter the wish so poignantly expressed by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the Tablets, whose summons she had
instantly arisen to carry out: “O that I could travel, even
though on foot and in the utmost poverty, to these regions, and,
raising the call of ‘Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá’ in cities,
villages, mountains, deserts and oceans, promote the Divine
teachings! This, alas, I cannot do. How intensely I deplore it!
Please God, ye may achieve it.”
“I am deeply distressed to hear of the death of good Miss Martha
Root,” is the royal tribute paid to her memory by Princess Olga of
Yugoslavia, on being informed of her death, “as I had no idea of
it. We always enjoyed her visits in the past. She was so kind and
gentle, and a real worker for peace. I am sure she will be sadly
missed in her work.”
“Thou art, in truth, a herald of the Kingdom and a harbinger of
the Covenant,”
is the testimony from the unerring pen of the
Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant Himself, “Thou art
truly self-sacrificing. Thou showest kindness unto all nations. Thou
art sowing a seed that shall, in due time, give rise to thousands of
harvests. Thou art planting a tree that shall eternally put forth
leaves and blossoms and yield fruits, and whose shadow shall day by
day grow in magnitude.”
Of all the services rendered the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh by this
star servant of His Faith, the most superb and by far the most
momentous has been the almost instantaneous response evoked in Queen
Marie of Rumania to the Message which that ardent and audacious
pioneer had carried to her during one of the darkest moments of her
life, an hour of bitter need, perplexity and sorrow. “It came,”
she herself in a letter had testified, “as all great messages come,
at an hour of dire grief and inner conflict and distress, so the seed
sank deeply.”
Eldest daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, who was the second son of
that Queen to whom Bahá’u’lláh had, in a significant Tablet,
addressed words of commendation; granddaughter of Czar Alexander II
to whom an Epistle had been revealed by that same Pen; related by
both birth and marriage to Europe’s most prominent families; born
in the Anglican Faith; closely associated through her marriage with
the Greek Orthodox Church, the state religion of her adopted country;
herself an accomplished authoress; possessed of a charming and
radiant personality; highly talented, clear-visioned, daring and
ardent by nature; keenly devoted to all enterprises of a humanitarian
character, she, alone among her sister-queens, alone among all those
of royal birth or station, was moved to spontaneously acclaim the
greatness of the Message of Bahá’u’lláh, to proclaim His
Fatherhood, as well as the Prophethood of Muḥammad, to commend the
Bahá’í teachings to all men and women, and to extol their
potency, sublimity and beauty.
Through the fearless acknowledgment of her belief to her own kith and
kin, and particularly to her youngest daughter; through three
successive encomiums that constitute her greatest and abiding legacy
to posterity; through three additional appreciations penned by her as
her contribution to Bahá’í publications; through several letters
written to friends and associates, as well as those addressed to her
guide and spiritual mother; through various tokens expressive of
faith and gratitude for the glad-tidings that had been brought to her
through the orders for Bahá’í books placed by her and her
youngest daughter; and lastly through her frustrated pilgrimage to
the Holy Land for the express purpose of paying homage at the graves
of the Founders of the Faith — through such acts as these this
illustrious queen may well deserve to rank as the first of those
royal supporters of the Cause of God who are to arise in the future,
and each of whom, in the words of Bahá’u’lláh Himself, is to be
acclaimed as “the very eye of mankind, the luminous ornament on
the brow of creation, the fountainhead of blessings unto the whole
world.”
“Some of those of my caste,” she, in a personal letter, has
significantly testified, “wonder at and disapprove my courage to
step forward pronouncing words not habitual for crowned heads to
pronounce, but I advance by an inner urge I cannot resist. With bowed
head I recognize that I too am but an instrument in greater Hands,
and I rejoice in the knowledge.”
A note which Martha Root, upon her arrival in Bucharest, sent to her
Majesty and a copy of “Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era,” which
accompanied the note, and which so absorbed the Queen’s attention
that she continued reading it into the small hours of the morning,
led, two days later, to the Queen’s granting Martha Root an
audience, on January 30, 1926, in Controceni Palace in Bucharest, in
the course of which her Majesty avowed her belief that “these
teachings are the solution for the world’s problems”; and from
these followed her publication, that same year on her own initiative,
of those three epoch-making testimonies which appeared in nearly two
hundred newspapers of the United States and Canada, and which were
subsequently translated and published in Europe, China, Japan,
Australia, the Near East and the Islands of the seas.
In the first of these testimonies she affirmed that the writings of
Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are “a great cry
toward peace, reaching beyond all limits of frontiers, above all
dissensions about rites and dogmas … It is a wondrous message that
Bahá’u’lláh and His Son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá have given us!
They have not set it up aggressively, knowing that the germ of
eternal truth which lies at its core cannot but take root and spread
… It is Christ’s message taken up anew, in the same words almost,
but adapted to the thousand years and more difference that lies
between the year one and today.” She added a remarkable admonition,
reminiscent of the telling words of Dr. Benjamin Jowett, who had
hailed the Faith, in his conversation with his pupil, Prof. Lewis
Campbell, as “the greatest light that has come into the world since
the time of Jesus Christ,” and cautioned him to “watch it” and
never let it out of his sight. “If ever,” wrote the Queen, “the
name of Bahá’u’lláh or ‘Abdu’l-Bahá comes to your
attention, do not put their writings from you. Search out their
books, and let their glorious, peace-bringing, love-creating words
and lessons sink into your hearts as they have into mine … Seek
them and be the happier.”
In another of these testimonies, wherein she makes a significant
comment on the station of the Arabian Prophet, she declared: “God
is all. Everything. He is the power behind all beings … His is the
voice within us that shows us good and evil. But mostly we ignore or
misunderstand this voice. Therefore, did He choose His Elect to come
down amongst us upon earth to make clear His Word, His real meaning.
Therefore the Prophets; therefore Christ, Muḥammad, Bahá’u’lláh,
for man needs from time to time a voice upon earth to bring God to
him, to sharpen the realization of the existence of the true God.
Those voices sent to us had to become flesh, so that with our earthly
ears we should be able to hear and understand.”
In appreciation of these testimonies a communication was addressed to
her, in the name of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh in East and
West, and in the course of the deeply touching letter which she sent
in reply she wrote: “Indeed a great light came to me with the
Message of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá … My
youngest daughter finds also great strength and comfort in the
teachings of the beloved Masters. We pass on the Message from mouth
to mouth, and all those we give it to see a light suddenly lighting
before them, and much that was obscure and perplexing becomes simple,
luminous and full of hope as never before. That my open letter was a
balm to those suffering for the Cause, is indeed a great happiness to
me, and I take it as a sign that God accepted my humble tribute. The
occasion given me to be able to express myself publicly was also His
work, for indeed it was a chain of circumstances of which each link
led me unwittingly one step further, till suddenly all was clear
before my eyes and I understood why it had been. Thus does He lead us
finally to our ultimate destiny … Little by little the veil is
lifting, grief tore it in two. And grief was also a step leading me
ever nearer truth; therefore do I not cry out against grief!”
In a significant and moving letter to an intimate American friend of
hers, residing in Paris, she wrote: “Lately a great hope has come
to me from one ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. I have found in His and His
Father, Bahá’u’lláh’s Message of faith, all my yearning for
real religion satisfied … What I mean: these Books have
strengthened me beyond belief, and I am now ready to die any day full
of hope. But I pray God not to take me away yet, for I still have a
lot of work to do.”
And again in one of her later appreciations of the Faith: “The
Bahá’í teaching brings peace and understanding. It is like a wide
embrace gathering all those who have long searched for words of hope
… Saddened by the continual strife amongst believers of many
confessions and wearied of their intolerance towards each other, I
discovered in the Bahá’í teaching the real spirit of Christ so
often denied and misunderstood.” And again, this wonderful
confession: “The Bahá’í teaching brings peace to the soul and
hope to the heart. To those in search of assurance the words of the
Father are as a fountain in the desert after long wandering.”
“The beautiful truth of Bahá’u’lláh,” she wrote to Martha
Root, “is with me always, a help and an inspiration. What I wrote
was because my heart overflowed with gratitude for the reflection you
brought me. I am happy if you think I helped. I thought it might
bring truth nearer because my words are read by so many.”
In the course of a visit to the Near East she expressed her intention
of visiting the Bahá’í Shrines, and, accompanied by her youngest
daughter, actually passed through Haifa, and was within sight of her
goal, when she was denied the right to make the pilgrimage she had
planned — to the keen disappointment of the aged Greatest Holy Leaf
who had eagerly expected her arrival. A few months later, in June,
1931, she wrote in the course of a letter to Martha Root: “Both
Ileana and I were cruelly disappointed at having been prevented going
to the holy Shrines … but at that time we were going through a
cruel crisis, and every movement I made was being turned against me
and being politically exploited in an unkind way. It caused me a good
deal of suffering and curtailed my liberty most unkindly … But the
beauty of truth remains, and I cling to it through all the
vicissitudes of a life become rather sad … I am glad to hear that
your traveling has been so fruitful, and I wish you continual success
knowing what a beautiful Message you are carrying from land to land.”
After this sad disappointment she wrote to a friend of her childhood
who dwelt near ‘Akká, in a house formerly occupied by Bahá’u’lláh:
“It was indeed nice to hear from you, and to think that you are of
all things living near Haifa and are, as I am, a follower of the
Bahá’í teachings. It interests me that you are living in that
special house … I was so intensely interested and studied each
photo intently. It must be a lovely place … and the house you live
in, so incredibly attractive and made precious by its associations
with the Man we all venerate…”
Her last public tribute to the Faith she had dearly loved was made
two years before her death. “More than ever today,” she wrote,
“when the world is facing such a crisis of bewilderment and unrest,
must we stand firm in Faith seeking that which binds together instead
of tearing asunder. To those searching for light, the Bahá’í
teachings offer a star which will lead them to deeper understanding,
to assurance, peace and goodwill with all men.”
Martha Root’s own illuminating record is given in one of her
articles as follows: “For ten years Her Majesty and her daughter,
H.R.H. Princess Ileana (now Arch-Duchess Anton) have read with
interest each new book about the Bahá’í Movement, as soon as it
came from the press … Received in audience by Her Majesty in
Pelisor Palace, Sinaia, in 1927, after the passing of His Majesty
King Ferdinand, her husband, she graciously gave me an interview,
speaking of the Bahá’í teachings about immortality. She had on
her table and on the divan a number of Bahá’í books, for she had
just been reading in each of them the Teachings about life after
death. She asked the writer to give her greeting to … the friends
in Írán and to the many American Bahá’ís, who she said had been
so remarkably kind to her during her trip through the United States
the year before … Meeting the Queen again on January 19, 1928, in
the Royal Palace in Belgrade, where she and H.R.H. Princess Ileana
were guests of the Queen of Yugoslavia — and they had brought some of
their Bahá’í books with them — the words that I shall remember
longest of all that her dear Majesty said were these: ‘The ultimate
dream which we shall realize is that the Bahá’í channel of
thought has such strength, it will serve little by little to become a
light to all those searching for the real expression of Truth’ …
Then in the audience in Controceni Palace, on February 16, 1934, when
her Majesty was told that the Rumanian translation of ‘Bahá’u’lláh
and the New Era’ had just been published in Bucharest, she said she
was so happy that her people were to have the blessing of reading
this precious teaching … And now today, February 4, 1936, I have
just had another audience with Her Majesty in Controceni Palace, in
Bucharest … Again Queen Marie of Rumania received me cordially in
her softly lighted library, for the hour was six o’clock … What a
memorable visit it was! … She also told me that when she was in
London she had met a Bahá’í, Lady Blomfield, who had shown her
the original Message that Bahá’u’lláh had sent to her
grand-mother, Queen Victoria, in London. She asked the writer about
the progress of the Bahá’í Movement, especially in the Balkan
countries … She spoke too of several Bahá’í books, the depths
of “Íqán,” and especially of “Gleanings from the Writings of
Bahá’u’lláh,” which she said was a wonderful book! To quote
her own words: ‘Even doubters would find a powerful strength in it,
if they would read it alone, and would give their souls time to
expand.’ … I asked her if I could perhaps speak of the brooch
which historically is precious to Bahá’ís, and she replied, ‘Yes,
you may.’ Once, and it was in 1928, Her dear Majesty had given the
writer a gift, a lovely and rare brooch which had been a gift to the
Queen from her royal relatives in Russia some years ago. It was two
little wings of wrought gold and silver, set with tiny diamond chips,
and joined together with one large pearl. ‘Always you are giving
gifts to others, and I am going to give you a gift from me,’ said
the Queen smiling, and she herself clasped it onto my dress. The
wings and the pearl made it seem ‘Light-bearing’ Bahá’í! It
was sent the same week to Chicago as a gift to the Bahá’í Temple
… and at the National Bahá’í Convention which was in session
that spring, a demur was made — should a gift from the Queen be sold?
Should it not be kept as a souvenir of the first Queen who arose to
promote the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh? However, it was sold
immediately and the money given to the Temple, for all Bahá’ís
were giving to the utmost to forward this mighty structure, the first
of its kind in the United States of America. Mr. Willard Hatch, a
Bahá’í of Los Angeles, Calif., who bought the exquisite brooch,
took it to Haifa, Palestine, in 1931, and placed it in the Archives
on Mt. Carmel, where down the ages it will rest with the Bahá’í
treasures…”
In July, 1938, Queen Marie of Rumania passed away. A message of
condolence was communicated, in the name of all Bahá’í
communities in East and West, to her daughter, the Queen of
Yugoslavia, to which she replied expressing “sincere thanks to all
of Bahá’u’lláh’s followers.” The National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Persia addressed, on behalf of the
followers of the Faith in Bahá’u’lláh’s native land, a letter
expressive of grief and sympathy to her son, the King of Rumania and
the Rumanian Royal Family, the text of which was in both Persian and
English. An expression of profound and loving sympathy was sent by
Martha Root to Princess Ileana, and was gratefully acknowledged by
her. Memorial gatherings were held in the Queen’s memory, at which
a meed of honor was paid to her bold and epochal confession of faith
in the Fatherhood of Bahá’u’lláh, to her recognition of the
station of the Prophet of Islám and to the several encomiums from
her pen. On the first anniversary of her death the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada
demonstrated its grateful admiration and affection for the deceased
Queen by associating itself, through an imposing floral offering,
with the impressive memorial service, held in her honor, and arranged
by the Rumanian Minister, in Bethlehem Chapel, at the Cathedral of
Washington, D.C., at which the American delegation, headed by the
Secretary of State and including government officials and
representatives of the Army and Navy, the British, French and Italian
Ambassadors, and representatives of other European embassies and
legations joined in a common tribute to one who, apart from the
imperishable renown achieved by her in the Kingdom of Bahá’u’lláh,
had earned, in this earthly life, the esteem and love of many a soul
living beyond the confines of her own country.
Queen Marie’s acknowledgment of the Divine Message stands as the
first fruits of the vision which Bahá’u’lláh had seen long
before in His captivity, and had announced in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas.
“How great,”
He wrote, “the blessedness that awaits
the King who will arise to aid My Cause in My Kingdom, who will
detach himself from all else but Me … All must glorify his name,
must reverence his station, and aid him to unlock the cities with the
keys of My Name, the Omnipotent Protector of all that inhabit the
visible and invisible kingdoms. Such a king is the very eye of
mankind, the luminous ornament on the brow of creation, the
fountain-head of blessings unto the whole world. Offer up, O people
of Bahá, your substance, nay your very lives for his assistance.”
The American Bahá’í community, crowned with imperishable glory by
these signal international services of Martha Root, was destined, as
the first Bahá’í century drew to a close, to distinguish itself,
through the concerted efforts of its members, both at home and
abroad, by further achievements of such scope and quality that no
survey of the teaching activities of the Faith in the course of that
century can afford to ignore them. It would be no exaggeration to say
that these colossal achievements, with the amazing results which
flowed from them, could only have been effected through the
harnessing of all the agencies of a newly established Administrative
Order, operating in conformity with a carefully conceived Plan, and
that they constitute a befitting conclusion to the record of a
hundred years of sublime endeavor in the service of the Cause of
Bahá’u’lláh.
That the community of His followers in the United States and Canada
should have carried off the palm of victory in the concluding years
of such a glorious century is not a matter for surprise. Its
accomplishments during the last two decades of the Heroic, and
throughout the first fifteen years of the Formative Age of the Bahá’í
Dispensation, had already augured well for its future, and had paved
the way for its final victory ere the expiration of the first century
of the Bahá’í Era.
The Báb had in His Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, almost a hundred years
previously, sounded His specific summons to the “peoples of the
West”
to “issue forth”
from their “cities”
and aid His Cause. Bahá’u’lláh, in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, had
collectively addressed the Presidents of the Republics of the entire
Americas, bidding them arise and “bind with the hands of justice
the broken,”
and “crush the oppressor”
with the “rod
of the commandments”
of their Lord, and had, moreover,
anticipated in His writings the appearance “in the West”
of the “signs of His Dominion.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá
had, on His part, declared that the “illumination”
shed by
His Father’s Revelation upon the West would acquire an
“extraordinary brilliancy,”
and that the “light of
the Kingdom”
would “shed a still greater illumination upon
the West”
than upon the East. He had extolled the American
continent in particular as “the land wherein the splendors of
His Light shall be revealed, where the mysteries of His Faith shall
be unveiled,”
and affirmed that “it will lead all nations
spiritually.”
More specifically still, He had singled out the
Great Republic of the West, the leading nation of that continent,
declaring that its people were “indeed worthy of being the first
to build the Tabernacle of the Most Great Peace and proclaim the
oneness of mankind,”
that it was “equipped and empowered
to accomplish that which will adorn the pages of history, to become
the envy of the world, and be blest in both the East and the West.”
The first act of His ministry had been to unfurl the standard of
Bahá’u’lláh in the very heart of that Republic. This was
followed by His own prolonged visit to its shores, by His dedication
of the first House of Worship to be built by the community of His
disciples in that land, and finally by the revelation, in the evening
of His life, of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, investing His
disciples with a mandate to plant the banner of His Father’s Faith,
as He had planted it in their own land, in all the continents, the
countries and islands of the globe. He had, furthermore, acclaimed
one of their most celebrated presidents as one who, through the
ideals he had expounded and the institutions he had inaugurated, had
caused the “dawn”
of the Peace anticipated by Bahá’u’lláh
to break; had voiced the hope that from their country “heavenly
illumination”
may “stream to all the peoples of the
world”
; had designated them in those Tablets as “Apostles
of Bahá’u’lláh”
; had assured them that, “should
success crown”
their “enterprise,”
“the throne
of the Kingdom of God will, in the plenitude of its majesty and
glory, be firmly established”
; and had made the stirring
announcement that “the moment this Divine Message is propagated”
by them “through the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa
and of Australasia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this
community will find itself securely established upon the throne of an
everlasting dominion,”
and that “the whole earth”
would “resound with the praises of its majesty and greatness.”
Execution of the Seven Year Plan by the American Bahá’í Community
That Community had already, in the lifetime of Him Who had created
it, tenderly nursed and repeatedly blessed it, and had at last
conferred upon it so distinctive a mission, arisen to launch the
enterprise of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár through the
purchase of its land and the laying of its foundations. It had
despatched its teachers to the East and to the West to propagate the
Cause it had espoused, had established the basis of its community
life, and had, since His passing, erected the superstructure and
commenced the external ornamentation of its Temple. It had, moreover,
assumed a preponderating share in the task of erecting the framework
of the Administrative Order of the Faith, of championing its cause,
of demonstrating its independent character, of enriching and
disseminating its literature, of lending moral and material
assistance to its persecuted followers, of repelling the assaults of
its adversaries and of winning the allegiance of royalty to its
Founder. Such a splendid record was to culminate, as the century
approached its end, in the initiation of a Plan — the first stage in
the execution of the Mission entrusted to it by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá — which,
within the space of seven brief years, was to bring to a successful
completion the exterior ornamentation of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár,
to almost double the number of Spiritual Assemblies functioning in
the North American continent, to bring the total number of localities
in which Bahá’ís reside to no less than thirteen hundred and
twenty-two in that same continent, to establish the structural basis
of the Administrative Order in every state of the United States and
every province of Canada, and by laying a firm anchorage in each of
the twenty Republics of Central and South America, to swell to sixty
the number of the sovereign states included within its orbit.
Many and diverse forces combined now to urge the American Bahá’í
community to strong action: the glowing exhortations and promises of
Bahá’u’lláh and His behest to erect in His name Houses of
Worship; the directions issued by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in fourteen
Tablets addressed to the believers residing in the Western, the
Central, the North Eastern and Southern States of the North American
Republic and in the Dominion of Canada; His prophetic utterances
regarding the future of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in
America; the influence of the new Administrative Order in fostering
and rendering effective an eager spirit of cooperation; the example
of Martha Root who, though equipped with no more than a handful of
inadequately translated leaflets, had traveled to South America and
visited every important city in that continent; the tenacity and
self-sacrifice of the fearless and brilliant Keith Ransom-Kehler, the
first American martyr, who, journeying to Persia had pleaded in
numerous interviews with ministers, ecclesiastics and government
officials the cause of her down-trodden brethren in that land, had
addressed no less than seven petitions to the Sháh, and,
heedless of the warnings of age and ill-health, had at last succumbed
in Iṣfahán. Other factors which spurred the members of that
community to fresh sacrifices and adventure were their eagerness to
reinforce the work intermittently undertaken through the settlement
and travels of a number of pioneers, who had established the first
center of the Faith in Brazil, circumnavigated the South American
continent and visited the West Indies and distributed literature in
various countries of Central and South America; the consciousness of
their pressing responsibilities in the face of a rapidly
deteriorating international situation; the realization that the first
Bahá’í century was fast speeding to a close and their anxiety to
bring to a befitting conclusion an enterprise that had been launched
thirty years previously. Undeterred by the immensity of the field,
the power wielded by firmly entrenched ecclesiastical organizations,
the political instability of some of the countries in which they were
to settle, the climatic conditions they were to encounter, and the
difference in language and custom of the people amongst whom they
were to reside, and keenly aware of the crying needs of the Faith in
the North American continent, the members of the American Bahá’í
community arose, as one man, to inaugurate a threefold campaign,
carefully planned and systematically conducted, designed to establish
a Spiritual Assembly in every virgin state and province in North
America, to form a nucleus of resident believers in each of the
Republics of Central and South America, and to consummate the
exterior ornamentation of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár.
A hundred activities, administrative and educational, were devised
and pursued for the prosecution of this noble Plan. Through the
liberal contribution of funds; through the establishment of an
Inter-America Committee and the formation of auxiliary Regional
Teaching Committees; through the founding of an International School
to provide training for Bahá’í teachers; through the settlement
of pioneers in virgin areas and the visits of itinerant teachers;
through the dissemination of literature in Spanish and Portuguese;
through the initiation of teacher training courses and extension work
by groups and local Assemblies; through newspaper and radio
publicity; through the exhibition of Temple slides and models;
through inter-community conferences and lectures delivered in
universities and colleges; through the intensification of teaching
courses and Latin American studies at summer schools — through these
and other activities the prosecutors of this Seven-Year Plan have
succeeded in sealing the triumph of what must be regarded as the
greatest collective enterprise ever launched by the followers of
Bahá’u’lláh in the entire history of the first Bahá’í
century.
Indeed, ere the expiry of that century not only had the work on the
Temple been completed sixteen months before the appointed time, but
instead of one tiny nucleus in every Latin Republic, Spiritual
Assemblies had already been established in Mexico City and Puebla
(Mexico), in Buenos Aires (Argentina), in Guatemala City (Guatemala),
in Santiago (Chile), in Montevideo (Uruguay), in Quito (Ecuador), in
Bogotá (Colombia), in Lima (Peru), in Asuncion (Paraguay), in
Tegucigalpa (Honduras), in San Salvador (El-Salvador), in San José
and Puntarenas (Costa Rica), in Havana (Cuba) and in Port-au-Prince
(Haiti). Extension work, in which newly fledged Latin American
believers were participating, had, moreover, been initiated, and was
being vigorously carried out, in the Republics of Mexico, Brazil,
Argentina, Chile, Panama and Costa Rica; believers had established
their residence not only in the capital cities of all the Latin
American Republics, but also in such centers as Veracruz, Cananea and
Tacubaya (Mexico), in Balboa and Christobal (Panama), in Recife
(Brazil), in Guayaquil and Ambato (Ecuador), and in Temuco and
Magellanes (Chile); the Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’ís of
Mexico City and of San José had been incorporated; in the former
city a Bahá’í center, comprising a library, a reading room and a
lecture room, had been founded; Bahá’í Youth Symposiums had been
observed in Havana, Buenos Aires and Santiago, whilst a distributing
center of Bahá’í literature for Latin America had been
established in Buenos Aires.
Nor was this gigantic enterprise destined to be deprived, in its
initial stage, of a blessing that was to cement the spiritual union
of the Americas — a blessing flowing from the sacrifice of one who,
at the very dawn of the Day of the Covenant, had been responsible for
the establishment of the first Bahá’í centers in both Europe and
the Dominion of Canada, and who, though seventy years of age and
suffering from ill-health, undertook a six thousand mile voyage to
the capital of Argentina, where, while still on the threshold of her
pioneer service, she suddenly passed away, imparting through such a
death to the work initiated in that Republic an impetus which has
already enabled it, through the establishment of a distributing
center of Bahá’í literature for Latin America and through other
activities, to assume the foremost position among its sister
Republics.
To May Maxwell, laid to rest in the soil of Argentina; to Hyde Dunn,
whose dust reposes in the Antipodes, in the city of Sydney; to Keith
Ransom-Kehler, entombed in distant Iṣfahán; to Susan Moody and
Lillian Kappes and their valiant associates who lie buried in Ṭihrán;
to Lua Getsinger, reposing forever in the capital of Egypt, and last
but not least to Martha Root, interred in an island in the bosom of
the Pacific, belong the matchless honor of having conferred, through
their services and sacrifice, a lustre upon the American Bahá’í
community for which its representatives, while celebrating at their
historic, their first All-American Convention, their hard-won
victories, may well feel eternally grateful.
Gathered within the walls of its national Shrine — the most sacred
Temple ever to be reared to the glory of Bahá’u’lláh;
commemorating at once the centenary of the birth of the Bábí
Dispensation, of the inauguration of the Bahá’í era, of the
inception of the Bahá’í Cycle and of the birth of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Faith
in the Western Hemisphere; associated in its celebration with the
representatives of American Republics, foregathered in the close
vicinity of a city that may well pride itself on being the first
Bahá’í center established in the Western world, this community
may indeed feel, on this solemn occasion, that it has, in its turn,
through the triumphal conclusion of the first stage of the Plan
traced for it by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, shed a lasting glory upon
its sister communities in East and West, and written, in golden
letters, the concluding pages in the annals of the first Bahá’í
century.
Thus drew to a close the first century of the Bahá’í era — an
epoch which, in its sublimity and fecundity, is without parallel in
the entire field of religious history, and indeed in the annals of
mankind. A process, God-impelled, endowed with measureless
potentialities, mysterious in its workings, awful in the retribution
meted out to every one seeking to resist its operation, infinitely
rich in its promise for the regeneration and redemption of human
kind, had been set in motion in Shíráz, had gained momentum
successively in Ṭihrán, Baghdád, Adrianople and ‘Akká,
had projected itself across the seas, poured its generative
influences into the West, and manifested the initial evidences of its
marvelous, world-energizing force in the midst of the North American
continent.
It had sprung from the heart of Asia, and pressing westward had
gathered speed in its resistless course, until it had encircled the
earth with a girdle of glory. It had been generated by the son of a
mercer in the province of Fárs, had been reshaped by a nobleman of
Núr, had been reinforced through the exertions of One Who had spent
the fairest years of His youth and manhood in exile and imprisonment,
and had achieved its most conspicuous triumphs in a country and
amidst a people living half the circumference of the globe distant
from the land of its origin. It had repulsed every onslaught directed
against it, torn down every barrier opposing its advance, abased
every proud antagonist who had sought to sap its strength, and had
exalted to heights of incredible courage the weakest and humblest
among those who had arisen and become willing instruments of its
revolutionizing power. Heroic struggles and matchless victories,
interwoven with appalling tragedies and condign punishments, have
formed the pattern of its hundred year old history.
A handful of students, belonging to the Shaykhí
school, sprung from the Ithná-‘Asharíyyih sect of
Shí‘ah Islám, had, in consequence of the operation of this
process, been expanded and transformed into a world community,
closely knit, clear of vision, alive, consecrated by the sacrifice of
no less than twenty thousand martyrs; supranational; non-sectarian;
non-political; claiming the status, and assuming the functions, of a
world religion; spread over five continents and the islands of the
seas; with ramifications extending over sixty sovereign states and
seventeen dependencies; equipped with a literature translated and
broadcast in forty languages; exercising control over endowments
representing several million dollars; recognized by a number of
governments in both the East and the West; integral in aim and
outlook; possessing no professional clergy; professing a single
belief; following a single law; animated by a single purpose;
organically united through an Administrative Order, divinely ordained
and unique in its features; including within its orbit
representatives of all the leading religions of the world, of various
classes and races; faithful to its civil obligations; conscious of
its civic responsibilities, as well as of the perils confronting the
society of which it forms a part; sharing the sufferings of that
society and confident of its own high destiny.
The nucleus of this community had been formed by the Báb, soon after
the night of the Declaration of His Mission to Mullá Ḥusayn in
Shíráz. A clamor in which the Sháh, his government,
his people and the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy of his country
unanimously joined had greeted its birth. Captivity, swift and cruel,
in the mountains of Ádhirbáyján, had been the lot of its
youthful Founder, almost immediately after His return from His
pilgrimage to Mecca. Amidst the solitude of Máh-Kú and Chihríq,
He had instituted His Covenant, formulated His laws, and transmitted
to posterity the overwhelming majority of His writings. A conference
of His disciples, headed by Bahá’u’lláh, had, in the hamlet of
Badasht, abrogated in dramatic circumstances the laws of the
Islamic, and ushered in the new, Dispensation. In Tabríz He had, in
the presence of the Heir to the Throne and the leading ecclesiastical
dignitaries of Ádhirbáyján, publicly and unreservedly
voiced His claim to be none other than the promised, the long-awaited
Qá’im. Tempests of devastating violence in Mázindarán, Nayríz,
Zanján and Ṭihrán had decimated the ranks of His followers and
robbed Him of the noblest and most valuable of His supporters. He
Himself had to witness the virtual annihilation of His Faith and the
loss of most of the Letters of the Living, and, after experiencing,
in His own person, a series of bitter humiliations, He had been
executed by a firing squad in the barrack-square of Tabríz. A blood
bath of unusual ferocity had engulfed the greatest heroine of His
Faith, had further denuded it of its adherents, had extinguished the
life of His trusted amanuensis and repository of His last wishes, and
swept Bahá’u’lláh into the depths of the foulest dungeon of
Ṭihrán.
In the pestilential atmosphere of the Síyáh-Chál, nine
years after that historic Declaration, the Message proclaimed by the
Báb had yielded its fruit, His promise had been redeemed, and the
most glorious, the most momentous period of the Heroic Age of the
Bahá’í era had dawned. A momentary eclipse of the newly risen Sun
of Truth, the world’s greatest Luminary, had ensued, as a result of
Bahá’u’lláh’s precipitate banishment to ‘Iráq by order of
Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, of His sudden withdrawal to the
mountains of Kurdistán, and of the degradation and confusion that
afflicted the remnant of the persecuted community of His
fellow-disciples in Baghdád. A reversal in the fortunes of a
fast declining community, following His return from His two-year
retirement, had set in, bringing in its wake the recreation of that
community, the reformation of its morals, the enhancement of its
prestige, the enrichment of its doctrine, and culminating in the
Declaration of His Mission in the garden of Najíbíyyih to His
immediate companions on the eve of His banishment to Constantinople.
Another crisis — the severest a struggling Faith was destined to
experience in the course of its history — precipitated by the
rebellion of the Báb’s nominee and the iniquities perpetrated by
him and by the evil genius that had seduced him, had, in Adrianople,
well nigh disrupted the newly consolidated forces of the Faith and
all but destroyed in a baptism of fire the community of the Most
Great Name which Bahá’u’lláh had called into being. Cleansed of
the pollution of this “Most Great Idol,” undeterred by the
convulsion that had seized it, an indestructible Faith had, in the
strength of the Covenant instituted by the Báb, now surmounted the
most formidable obstacles it was ever to meet; and in this very hour
it reached its meridian glory through the proclamation of the Mission
of Bahá’u’lláh to the kings, the rulers and ecclesiastical
leaders of the world in both the East and the West. Close on the
heels of this unprecedented victory had followed the climax of His
sufferings, a banishment to the penal colony of ‘Akká, decreed by
Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz. This had been hailed by vigilant
enemies as the signal for the final extermination of a much feared
and hated adversary, and it had heaped upon that Faith in this
fortress-town, designated by Bahá’u’lláh as His “Most
Great Prison,”
calamities from both within and without, such as
it had never before experienced. The formulation of the laws and
ordinances of a new-born Dispensation and the enunciation and
reaffirmation of its fundamental principles — the warp and woof of a
future Administrative Order — had, however, enabled a slowly maturing
Revelation, in spite of this tide of tribulations, to advance a stage
further and yield its fairest fruit.
The ascension of Bahá’u’lláh had plunged into grief and
bewilderment His loyal supporters, quickened the hopes of the
betrayers of His Cause, who had rebelled against His God-given
authority, and rejoiced and encouraged His political as well as
ecclesiastical adversaries. The Instrument He had forged, the
Covenant He had Himself instituted, had canalized, after His passing,
the forces released by Him in the course of a forty-year ministry,
had preserved the unity of His Faith and provided the impulse
required to propel it forward to achieve its destiny. The
proclamation of this new Covenant had been followed by yet another
crisis, precipitated by one of His own sons on whom, according to the
provisions of that Instrument, had been conferred a rank second to
none except the Center of that Covenant Himself. Impelled by the
forces engendered by the revelation of that immortal and unique
Document, an unbreachable Faith (having registered its initial
victory over the Covenant-breakers), had, under the leadership of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, irradiated the West, illuminated the Western
fringes of Europe, hoisted its banner in the heart of the North
American continent, and set in motion the processes that were to
culminate in the transfer of the mortal remains of its Herald to the
Holy Land and their entombment in a mausoleum on Mt. Carmel, as well
as in the erection of its first House of Worship in Russian
Turkistán. A major crisis, following swiftly upon the signal
victories achieved in East and West, attributable to the monstrous
intrigues of the Arch-breaker of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant and
to the orders issued by the tyrannical ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, had
exposed, during more than seven years, the Heart and Center of the
Faith to imminent peril, filled with anxiety and anguish its
followers and postponed the execution of the enterprises conceived
for its spread and consolidation. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
historic journeys in Europe and America, soon after the fall of that
tyrant and the collapse of his régime, had dealt a staggering blow
to the Covenant-breakers, had consolidated the colossal enterprise He
had undertaken in the opening years of His ministry, had raised the
prestige of His Father’s Faith to heights it had never before
attained, had been instrumental in proclaiming its verities far and
wide, and had paved the way for the diffusion of its light over the
Far East and as far as the Antipodes. Another major crisis — the last
the Faith was to undergo at its world center — provoked by the cruel
Jamál Páshá, and accentuated by the anxieties of a
devastating world war, by the privations it entailed and the rupture
of communications it brought about, had threatened with still graver
peril the Head of the Faith Himself, as well as the holiest
sanctuaries enshrining the remains of its twin Founders. The
revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, during the somber days
of that tragic conflict, had, in the concluding years of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry, invested the members of the
leading Bahá’í community in the West — the champions of a future
Administrative Order — with a world mission which, in the concluding
years of the first Bahá’í century, was to shed deathless glory
upon the Faith and its administrative institutions. The conclusion of
that long and distressing conflict had frustrated the hopes of that
military despot and inflicted an ignominious defeat on him, had
removed, once and for all, the danger that had overshadowed for
sixty-five years the Founder of the Faith and the Center of His
Covenant, fulfilled the prophecies recorded by Him in His writings,
enhanced still further the prestige of His Faith and its Leader, and
been signalized by the spread of His Message to the continent of
Australia.
The sudden passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, marking the close of
the Primitive Age of the Faith, had, as had been the case with the
ascension of His Father, submerged in sorrow and consternation His
faithful disciples, imparted fresh hopes to the dwindling followers
of both Mírzá Yaḥyá and Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí, and stirred
to feverish activity political as well as ecclesiastical adversaries,
all of whom anticipated the impending dismemberment of the
communities which the Center of the Covenant had so greatly inspired
and ably led. The promulgation of His Will and Testament,
inaugurating the Formative Age of the Bahá’í era, the Charter
delineating the features of an Order which the Báb had announced,
which Bahá’u’lláh had envisioned, and whose laws and principles
He had enunciated, had galvanized these communities in Europe, Asia,
Africa and America into concerted action, enabling them to erect and
consolidate the framework of this Order, by establishing its local
and national Assemblies, by framing the constitutions of these
Assemblies, by securing the recognition on the part of the civil
authorities in various countries of these institutions, by founding
administrative headquarters, by raising the superstructure of the
first House of Worship in the West, by establishing and extending the
scope of the endowments of the Faith and by obtaining the full
recognition by the civil authorities of the religious character of
these endowments at its world center as well as in the North American
continent.
A severe, a historic censure pronounced by a Muslim ecclesiastical
court in Egypt had, whilst this mighty process — the laying of the
structural basis of the Bahá’í world Administrative Order — was
being initiated, officially expelled all adherents of the Faith of
Muslim extraction from Islám, had condemned them as heretics and
brought the members of a proscribed community face to face with tests
and perils of a character they had never known before. The unjust
decision of a civil court in Baghdád, instigated by Shí‘ah
enemies, in ‘Iráq, and the decree issued by a still more
redoubtable adversary in Russia had, moreover, robbed the Faith, on
the one hand, of one of its holiest centers of pilgrimage, and denied
it, on the other, the use of its first House of Worship, initiated by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá and erected in the course of His ministry.
And finally, inspired by this unexpected declaration made by an
age-long enemy — marking the first step in the march of their Faith
towards total emancipation — and undaunted by this double blow struck
at its institutions, the followers of Bahá’u’lláh, already
united and fully equipped through the agencies of a firmly
established Administrative Order, had arisen to crown the immortal
records of the first Bahá’í century by vindicating the
independent character of their Faith, by enforcing the fundamental
laws ordained in their Most Holy Book, by demanding and in some cases
obtaining, the recognition by the ruling authorities of their right
to be classified as followers of an independent religion, by securing
from the world’s highest Tribunal its condemnation of the injustice
they had suffered at the hands of their persecutors, by establishing
their residence in no less than thirty-four additional countries, as
well as in thirteen dependencies, by disseminating their literature
in twenty-nine additional languages, by enrolling a Queen in the
ranks of the supporters of their Cause, and lastly by launching an
enterprise which, as that century approached its end, enabled them to
complete the exterior ornamentation of their second House of Worship,
and to bring to a successful conclusion the first stage of the Plan
which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had conceived for the world-wide and
systematic propagation of their Faith.
Kings, emperors, princes, whether of the East or of the West, had, as
we look back upon the tumultuous record of an entire century, either
ignored the summons of its Founders, or derided their Message, or
decreed their exile and banishment, or barbarously persecuted their
followers, or sedulously striven to discredit their teachings. They
were visited by the wrath of the Almighty, many losing their thrones,
some witnessing the extinction of their dynasties, a few being
assassinated or covered with shame, others finding themselves
powerless to avert the cataclysmic dissolution of their kingdoms,
still others being degraded to positions of subservience in their own
realms. The Caliphate, its arch-enemy, had unsheathed the sword
against its Author and thrice pronounced His banishment. It was
humbled to dust, and, in its ignominious collapse, suffered the same
fate as the Jewish hierarchy, the chief persecutor of Jesus Christ,
had suffered at the hands of its Roman masters, in the first century
of the Christian Era, almost two thousand years before. Members of
various sacerdotal orders, Shí‘ah, Sunní, Zoroastrian and
Christian, had fiercely assailed the Faith, branded as heretic its
supporters, and labored unremittingly to disrupt its fabric and
subvert its foundations. The most redoubtable and hostile amongst
these orders were either overthrown or virtually dismembered, others
rapidly declined in prestige and influence, all were made to sustain
the impact of a secular power, aggressive and determined to curtail
their privileges and assert its own authority. Apostates, rebels,
betrayers, heretics, had exerted their utmost endeavors, privily or
openly, to sap the loyalty of the followers of that Faith, to split
their ranks or assault their institutions. These enemies were, one by
one, some gradually, others with dramatic swiftness, confounded,
dispersed, swept away and forgotten. Not a few among its leading
figures, its earliest disciples, its foremost champions, the
companions and fellow-exiles of its Founders, trusted amanuenses and
secretaries of its Author and of the Center of His Covenant, even
some of those who were numbered among the kindred of the
Manifestation Himself, not excluding the nominee of the Báb and the
son of Bahá’u’lláh, named by Him in the Book of His Covenant,
had allowed themselves to pass out from under its shadow, to bring
shame upon it, through acts of indelible infamy, and to provoke
crises of such dimensions as have never been experienced by any
previous religion. All were precipitated, without exception, from the
enviable positions they occupied, many of them lived to behold the
frustration of their designs, others were plunged into degradation
and misery, utterly impotent to impair the unity, or stay the march,
of the Faith they had so shamelessly forsaken. Ministers, ambassadors
and other state dignitaries had plotted assiduously to pervert its
purpose, had instigated the successive banishments of its Founders,
and maliciously striven to undermine its foundations. They had,
through such plottings, unwittingly brought about their own downfall,
forfeited the confidence of their sovereigns, drunk the cup of
disgrace to its dregs, and irrevocably sealed their own doom.
Humanity itself, perverse and utterly heedless, had refused to lend a
hearing ear to the insistent appeals and warnings sounded by the twin
Founders of the Faith, and later voiced by the Center of the Covenant
in His public discourses in the West. It had plunged into two
desolating wars of unprecedented magnitude, which have deranged its
equilibrium, mown down its youth, and shaken it to its roots. The
weak, the obscure, the down-trodden had, on the other hand, through
their allegiance to so mighty a Cause and their response to its
summons, been enabled to accomplish such feats of valor and heroism
as to equal, and in some cases to dwarf, the exploits of those men
and women of undying fame whose names and deeds adorn the spiritual
annals of mankind.
Despite the blows leveled at its nascent strength, whether by the
wielders of temporal and spiritual authority from without, or by
black-hearted foes from within, the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh had,
far from breaking or bending, gone from strength to strength, from
victory to victory. Indeed its history, if read aright, may be said
to resolve itself into a series of pulsations, of alternating crises
and triumphs, leading it ever nearer to its divinely appointed
destiny. The outburst of savage fanaticism that greeted the birth of
the Revelation proclaimed by the Báb, His subsequent arrest and
captivity, had been followed by the formulation of the laws of His
Dispensation, by the institution of His Covenant, by the inauguration
of that Dispensation in Badasht, and by the public assertion
of His station in Tabríz. Widespread and still more violent
uprisings in the provinces, His own execution, the blood bath which
followed it and Bahá’u’lláh’s imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál
had been succeeded by the breaking of the dawn of the Bahá’í
Revelation in that dungeon. Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to
‘Iráq, His withdrawal to Kurdistán and the confusion and distress
that afflicted His fellow-disciples in Baghdád had, in turn,
been followed by the resurgence of the Bábí community, culminating
in the Declaration of His Mission in the Najíbíyyih Garden. Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz’s decree summoning Him to Constantinople and the
crisis precipitated by Mírzá Yaḥyá had been succeeded by the
proclamation of that Mission to the crowned heads of the world and
its ecclesiastical leaders. Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment to the
penal colony of ‘Akká, with all its attendant troubles and
miseries, had, in its turn, led to the promulgation of the laws and
ordinances of His Revelation and to the institution of His Covenant,
the last act of His life. The fiery tests engendered by the rebellion
of Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí and his associates had been succeeded
by the introduction of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the West and
the transfer of the Báb’s remains to the Holy Land. The renewal of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s incarceration and the perils and
anxieties consequent upon it had resulted in the downfall of
‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s release from His
confinement, in the entombment of the Báb’s remains on Mt. Carmel,
and in the triumphal journeys undertaken by the Center of the
Covenant Himself in Europe and America. The outbreak of a devastating
world war and the deepening of the dangers to which Jamál Páshá
and the Covenant-breakers had exposed Him had led to the revelation
of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, to the flight of that overbearing
Commander, to the liberation of the Holy Land, to the enhancement of
the prestige of the Faith at its world center, and to a marked
expansion of its activities in East and West. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
passing and the agitation which His removal had provoked had been
followed by the promulgation of His Will and Testament, by the
inauguration of the Formative Age of the Bahá’í era and by the
laying of the foundations of a world-embracing Administrative Order.
And finally, the seizure of the keys of the Tomb of Bahá’u’lláh
by the Covenant-breakers, the forcible occupation of His House in
Baghdád by the Shí‘ah community, the outbreak of
persecution in Russia and the expulsion of the Bahá’í community
from Islám in Egypt had been succeeded by the public assertion of
the independent religious status of the Faith by its followers in
East and West, by the recognition of that status at its world center,
by the pronouncement of the Council of the League of Nations
testifying to the justice of its claims, by a remarkable expansion of
its international teaching activities and its literature, by the
testimonials of royalty to its Divine origin, and by the completion
of the exterior ornamentation of its first House of Worship in the
western world.
The tribulations attending the progressive unfoldment of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh have indeed been such as to exceed in gravity those
from which the religions of the past have suffered. Unlike those
religions, however, these tribulations have failed utterly to impair
its unity, or to create, even temporarily, a breach in the ranks of
its adherents. It has not only survived these ordeals, but has
emerged, purified and inviolate, endowed with greater capacity to
face and surmount any crisis which its resistless march may engender
in the future.
Mighty indeed have been the tasks accomplished and the victories
achieved by this sorely-tried yet undefeatable Faith within the space
of a century! Its unfinished tasks, its future victories, as it
stands on the threshold of the second Bahá’í century, are greater
still. In the brief space of the first hundred years of its existence
it has succeeded in diffusing its light over five continents, in
erecting its outposts in the furthermost corners of the earth, in
establishing, on an impregnable basis its Covenant with all mankind,
in rearing the fabric of its world-encompassing Administrative Order,
in casting off many of the shackles hindering its total emancipation
and world-wide recognition, in registering its initial victories over
royal, political and ecclesiastical adversaries, and in launching the
first of its systematic crusades for the spiritual conquest of the
whole planet.
The institution, however, which is to constitute the last stage in
the erection of the framework of its world Administrative Order,
functioning in close proximity to its world spiritual center, is as
yet unestablished. The full emancipation of the Faith itself from the
fetters of religious orthodoxy, the essential prerequisite of its
universal recognition and of the emergence of its World Order, is
still unachieved. The successive campaigns, designed to extend the
beneficent influence of its System, according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
Plan, to every country and island where the structural basis of its
Administrative Order has not been erected, still remain to be
launched. The banner of Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá which, as foretold by
Him, must float from the pinnacles of the foremost seat of learning
in the Islamic world is still unhoisted. The Most Great House,
ordained as a center of pilgrimage by Bahá’u’lláh in His
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, is as yet unliberated. The third Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
to be raised to His glory, the site of which has recently been
acquired, as well as the Dependencies of the two Houses of Worship
already erected in East and West, are as yet unbuilt. The dome, the
final unit which, as anticipated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, is to
crown the Sepulcher of the Báb is as yet unreared. The codification
of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Mother-Book of the Bahá’í Revelation,
and the systematic promulgation of its laws and ordinances, are as
yet unbegun. The preliminary measures for the institution of Bahá’í
courts, invested with the legal right to apply and execute those laws
and ordinances, still remain to be undertaken. The restitution of the
first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the Bahá’í world and
the recreation of the community that so devotedly reared it, have yet
to be accomplished. The sovereign who, as foreshadowed in
Bahá’u’lláh’s Most Holy Book, must adorn the throne of His
native land, and cast the shadow of royal protection over His
long-persecuted followers, is as yet undiscovered. The contest that
must ensue as a result of the concerted onslaughts which, as
prophesied by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, are to be delivered by the
leaders of religions as yet indifferent to the advance of the Faith,
is as yet unfought. The Golden Age of the Faith itself that must
witness the unification of all the peoples and nations of the world,
the establishment of the Most Great Peace, the inauguration of the
Kingdom of the Father upon earth, the coming of age of the entire
human race and the birth of a world civilization, inspired and
directed by the creative energies released by Bahá’u’lláh’s
World Order, shining in its meridian splendor, is still unborn and
its glories unsuspected.
Whatever may befall this infant Faith of God in future decades or in
succeeding centuries, whatever the sorrows, dangers and tribulations
which the next stage in its world-wide development may engender, from
whatever quarter the assaults to be launched by its present or future
adversaries may be unleashed against it, however great the reverses
and setbacks it may suffer, we, who have been privileged to
apprehend, to the degree our finite minds can fathom, the
significance of these marvelous phenomena associated with its rise
and establishment, can harbor no doubt that what it has already
achieved in the first hundred years of its life provides sufficient
guarantee that it will continue to forge ahead, capturing loftier
heights, tearing down every obstacle, opening up new horizons and
winning still mightier victories until its glorious mission,
stretching into the dim ranges of time that lie ahead, is totally
fulfilled.